AN  ANCESTRAL 
INVASION  AND 


MADELINE 
YALE  WYNNE 


l.'iiitl!  ilii 


AN 
ANCESTRAL   INVASION 

And  Other  Stories 


AN 
ANCESTRAL  INVASION 

<±And  Other  Stones 

BY 
MADELINE  YALE  WYNNE 

SELECTED  BY 
ANNIE   CABOT   PUTNAM 


THE    COUNTRY    LIFE    PRESS 

GARDEN    CITY  NEW    YORK 

I92O 


PS. 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY 

ANNIE  CABOT  PUTNAM 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED,  INCLUDING  THAT  OF 

TRANSLATION  INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAVIAN 


COPYRIGHT,  J897,  1898,  BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 


FOREWORD 

To  INTRODUCE  this  book  of  stories  and  im 
aginings  to  new  readers  is  a  pleasure.  Many 
people  in  the  Eastern  and  now  Central  States 
have,  in  later  years,  remembered  with  joy  hav 
ing  heard  some  of  them  read  by  the  bright  friend 
who  is  gone,  and  are  glad  that  they  may  enjoy 
them  anew.  She  knew  the  New  England  country 
people  of  a  generation  now  past,  and  in  her 
presentation  of  their  old-time  ways  had  love 
and  respect  for  them.  Like  Whittier,  she  cared 
to  present  "The  unsung  beauty  hid  life's  com 
mon  things  below";  yet  also  she  enjoyed  their 
canny  side.  None  the  less  her  eyes  could  see 
the  happy  faun  in  the  wood  as  well  as  appreci 
ate  the  ingenious  malice  of  the  household  imp. 

Strangely  gifted  artist  as  she  was  with  pen, 
brush,  violin,  crucible,  carving-tool  and  cleft 
gemsetter's  pliers,  she  encouraged  and  guided 
in  others  any  gift  that  might  by  real  effort  be 
made  good.  Her  sympathy  was  ready — she 
had  for  all  who  came  near  her  a  simple  but  high 
courtesy. 

The  late  Mr.  Philip  H.  Wynne,  her  son,  and 
her  friend  Miss  Anna  Cabot  Putnam  selected 
and  edited  these  stories. 

EDWARD  WALDO  EMERSON. 


"For  cleft,  read  deft1 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD  BY  EDWARD  WALDO  EMERSON.  v 

CHAPTER 

I.     A  MASTER-HAND  AT  BEES       .     .  3 

II.     AN  ANCESTRAL  INVASION    ...  15 

III.  THE  UNDOING  OF  THE  BURGLAR  .  33 

IV.  SABRINY,  DAD  AND  Co.       ...  45 

V.     A  DROVE  OF  FACTS  AND  A  FLOCK 

OF  FANCIES 59 

VI.     A  CHIP  OF  THE  OLD  BLOCK     .     .  65 

VII.     A  STUDY  IN  HANDS 75 

VIII.     A  FLIGHT  OF  FEATHERS      ...  87 

IX.     AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  TIME   ...  99 

X.     A  GAME  OF  SOLITAIRE   ....  105 

XI.     THE  HOUSE  THAT  STEPHEN  BUILT  131 

XII.     IN  NETHER  SPACES 159 


AN 
ANCESTRAL  INVASION 

And  Other  Stories 


AN   ANCESTRAL    INVASION 

And  Other  Stories 

A  MASTER-HAND  AT  BEES 

MARY  ELLEN,  you  jest  let  that  kettle 
alone;  I'm  goin'  to  'tend  to  it  myself 
as  soon  as  ever  I  can.  I'll  git  round  to 
it  before  noon." 

"I'd  jest  as  soon  wash  it  as  not;  I'm  pretty 
nigh  through  with  the  moppin',"  said  Mary 
Ellen  in  a  muffled  tone,  her  head  bent  over  the 
mop  that  she  was  twisting  vigorously,  holding 
the  handle  tightly  between  her  knees;  her  mouth 
working  with  every  twist  of  the  dripping  cloth, 
while  her  eyes  travelled  along  the  last  strip 
of  floor  to  be  wiped  dry. 

"I  don't  want  you  should,  let  it  alone." 
Sarah  Emma's  voice  came  from  the  buttery; 
the  words  were  emphasized  by  thuds  of  the 
rollingpin  as  it  flattened  out  the  dough  of  the 
seed  cakes,  ready  for  the  cutting  out. 

Sarah  Emma  was  hurrying  to  get  her  baking 
done  and  out  of  the  way.  Mary  Ellen  was 
hurrying  to  get  her  mopping  done  and  the  floor 


4  A    MASTER-HAND    AT    BEES 

dried.  They  were  both  working  with  a  right 
eous  frenzy,  a  perfect  debauch  of  New  England 
conscience.  The  Sewing  Circle  of  the  Baptist 
Church  at  Four  Corners  was  to  meet  at  their 
house,  the  one  annual  society  function  under 
their  roof.  There  were  still  many  things  to  be 
done.  Mary  Ellen  was  to  run  up  to  the  store, 
over  the  hill,  to  get  a  pound  of  black  tea.  Both 
she  and  Sarah  Emma  always  drank  green  tea; 
so  did  most  of  the  folks  up  their  way,  except 
the  minister's  wife;  she  came  from  the  city  and 
so  she  drank  black  tea.  This  seemed  a  distinc 
tion  between  lay  and  official  religion,  and  it 
would  have  been  most  indecorous  of  them  to 
have  failed  to  provide  the  more  chastened 
drink. 

In  her  haste  Mary  Ellen  accidentally  hit,  with 
the  handle  of  her  mop,  the  kettle  that  stood  on 
the  stone  hearth,  and  was  the  cause  of  the  flur 
ried  dispute. 

"Now,  Mary  Ellen,  be  you  goin'  to  let  that 
kettle  alone  or  not?  Don't  you  dare  to  tetch 
it." 

The  voice  was  imperative,  even  a  trifle 
threatening,  and  the  rollingpin  paused  for  an 
answer. 

"I  ain't  a-meddling  with  it,"  was  the  brief 
reply.  Sarah  Emma's  voice  had  raised  the  ire 
in  Mary  Ellen's  righteous  breast,  and  she  made 
a  mental  reservation  to  the  effect  that  she 


A   MASTER-HAND   AT   BEES  5 

hadn't,  so  far,  promised  not  to  wash  it  or  meddle 
with  it  when  she  got  ready. 

Pork  and  greens  had  been  boiled  in  the  pot, 
it  was  the  first  mess  of  beet-tops  that  they  had 
gathered  this  year;  of  course  in  the  everyday 
march  of  events  the  kettle  would  have  been  set 
away  till  the  next  day  so  that  the  pork  fat  would 
rise  and  be  skimmed  off,  but  to-day  the  yearly 
invasion  of  the  Sewing  Circle  made  it  imperative 
that  every  corner  of  the  house  should  be  made 
ready.  The  eyes  of  the  community  would  be 
on  each  and  every  detail  of  their  housekeeping; 
why  otherwise  have  the  meeting?  What  would 
there  be  to  talk  about  afterward  ?  How  was  any 
one  to  get  at  the  standing  of  each  housekeeper 
except  by  the  showing  at  these  meetings?  No 
black  pot  should  be  a  blot  on  their  escutcheon; 
their  reputation  must  remain  immaculate.  This 
was  how  matters  had  been  brought  to  this  in 
harmonious  condition,  for  Sarah  Emma  in  a 
moment  of  unwonted  slackness  had  said  "  bother 
the  pot,  let  it  stand  over;  put  it  out  in  the  shed; 
'tain't  likely  folks  will  investigate  that." 

But  Mary  Ellen  was  determined  not  to  risk  it 
and  so  the  clash  had  ensued  and  now  the  pot  had 
swelled  to  immense  proportions  in  the  conscious 
ness  of  both  sisters;  it  loomed  upon  their  mental 
horizons  a  gigantic  issue;  it  became  a  test  of 
character.  The  pot  had  invaded  inner  shrines 
where  the  holiest  imperatives  lie — that  sacred 


6  A   MASTER-HAND   AT    BEES 

precinct  of  the  New  England  woman's  character 
which  is  governed  by  will  and  illuminated  by 
liberty  of  conscience. 

Sarah  Emma  argued  that  because  she  had 
washed  the  other  dishes  it  was  her  duty  and 
privilege  to  do  this  as  it  was  the  most  disagree 
able  of  tasks  and  therefore  doubly  a  duty.  How 
otherwise  was  sweet  martyrdom  to  be  obtained? 

Mary  Ellen's  point  of  view  was,  that  as  she 
had  insisted  on  the  kettle's  being  washed  to-day, 
in  violation  of  long-established  custom,  it  was 
her  duty  to  do  it  herself;  besides  which,  Sarah 
Emma  had  been  short  about  it  and  dictator 
ial;  she  was  just  like  her  aunt  she  was  named 
after.  Thus  Mary  Ellen's  determination,  like 
a  dye,  was  fixed  by  the  mordant  of  another's 
opposition. 

In  the  little  kitchen  there  was  a  silent  but 
forceful  conflict  of  wills  for  a  short  space  of  time; 
then  Sarah  Emma  remarked  in  a  casual  tone, 
"  I  ain't  baked  only  five  dozen  of  these  seed  cakes. 
That  ought  to  be  enough  in  all  conscience, 
along  with  that  cup-cake,  besides  all  the  stuff 
that  the  folks  will  bring  along;  I  made  double 
the  receipt.  I  dunno  as  I  needed  to  make 
any,  only  I  am  so  sick  o'  hearin'  Eliza  Price 
forever  harpin'  on  the  kind  she  makes,  the  kind 
she  won't  give  the  receipt  of  to  nobody.  I  sort 
of  wanted  to  show,  oncet  fur  all,  that  some 
folks  know  somethin'  about  cookin'  as  well  as 


A    MASTER-HAND   AT    BEES  7 

other  folks.  But  I  never  would  have  started 
in  ef  I'd  a-known  them  pesky  bees  would  have 
swarmed  to-day.  It  took  me  two  good  hours 
by  the  clock  to  get  'em  in,  though  I  will  say  I 
never  seen  a  handsomer  swarm,  or  one  that  took 
more  kindly  to  bein'  hived;  their  buzzin'  was 
just  as  friendly  as  could  be,  not  mad  for  a  min 
ute.  It  seemed  as  ef  they  fairly  hankered  to  be 
took  in;  they  crawled  all  over  me  jest  as  kindly 
as  ever  was,  and  I  scooped  'em  in  like  they  was 
a  mess  o'  berries  in  a  pail.  We  ain't  had  no  sech 
a  swarm  sence  five  years  past.  I  dunno  as  I 
begrudge  the  time,  though  it  has  set  me  dread 
fully  behindhand.  It's  like  tryin'  to  haul  a  cat 
backward  by  its  tail  to  make  time  fur  all  I've 
got  to  do." 

Mary  Ellen  did  not  answer  this  propitiatory 
monologue,  she  soused  her  mop  and  hung  it  up 
to  dry  in  the  woodshed,  turned  the  mop-pail 
upside  down  to  dry  and  said  in  a  cold  voice, 
"I  guess  I'll  put  on  my  sunbonnet  and  run  over 
to  the  store  for  a  pound  of  that  black  tea."  She 
paused  a  minute  and  then  said,  in  an  offhand 
manner:  "Hadn't  I  better  jest  rense  out  the 
pot,  seein'  as  my  hands  is  wet?" 
"No,  you  won't,  let  it  alone  I  say." 
It  was  hot  in  the  kitchen.  June  was  floating 
in  at  the  open  door.  The  bees  hummed  about 
in  the  long  row  of  hives  under  the  apple  trees. 
The  cat  lay  in  the  sunny  path  lazily  watching 


8  A    MASTER-HAND    AT    BEES 

the  quick  flirt  of  the  unattainable  cat-bird  in 
the  lilac  bush. 

The  sweet,  dry  odour  of  caraway  cookies  in 
the  oven  blew  through  the  kitchen.  On  the 
hearth  sat  the  complacent  black  pot,  the  success 
ful  breeder  of  belligerency  in  the  breasts  of  these 
kind,  conscientious  New  England  sisters.  Sarah 
Emma  in  aggressive  silence  took  the  last  batch 
of  perfect  discs  from  the  oven  and  added  them 
to  the  panful  of  sweetness  that  was  cooling  in 
the  pantry  window. 

In  an  inner  room  Mary  Ellen  slipped  a  dark 
skirt  on  over  her  working  dress,  and  tying  her 
bonnet  strings,  said:  "Well!  ef  you  are  so  set 
about  the  pot  I  may  as  well  go  for  that  tea.  I 
s'pose,  Sarah  Emma,  you  ain't  forgot  that  you 
was  to  go  over  to  cousin  Jane's  and  borry  her 
extry  long  tablecloth,  the  snow-drop  one;  there 
ain't  a  single  one  of  ourn  that's  long  enough  fur 
the  double  table." 

This  was  said  in  a  suppressed  tone;  it  implied 
something  like  this — "I  hope  you  see  that  I  ain't 
got  no  hard  feelin's  on  account  of  that  pot, 
though  you  must  admit  yourself  that  you  are 
unreasonable  about  it.  I  only  hope  you  will 
have  time  to  get  your  chores  done  before  the 
folks  begin  to  come." 

Sarah  Emma  heard  the  meaning  of  the  un 
spoken  words  wrapped  up  in  the  spoken  words; 
she  responded  in  the  same  counterpoint  of  ideas. 


A   MASTER-HAND    AT    BEES  9 

"I  am  goin'  right  off  for  that  tablecloth." 
The  thought  under  this  was  that  she  wasn't  going 
to  be  mean  enough  to  march  up  and  take  that 
kettle  and  wash  it,  right  before  Mary  Ellen's 
face;  she  would  wait  till  she  had  been  over  to 
Jane's  for  the  tablecloth  and  then  hurry  home 
and  wash  it  up  before  Mary  Ellen  got  home. 
It  was  only  a  stone's  throw  over  to  Jane's,  there 
would  be  plenty  of  time  for  the  conclusive  deed 
before  Mary  Ellen  could  possibly  get  back  from 
the  store. 

She  could  see  Mary  Ellen's  back  as  she 
climbed  the  steep  hill  that  led  to  the  Corners, 
she  saw  her  nearing  the  brow  where  the  road 
forks,  and  then  she  ran  out  through  the  garden 
and  climbed  the  stone  wall  by  the  currant 
bushes  and  stood  on  the  top  of  it,  hanging  to  a 
low  branch  of  an  apple  tree  in  full  blossom, 
to  steady  herself  while  she  looked  along  the 
road  to  watch  Mary  Ellen  still  toiling  up  the 
hill. 

Now  Mary  Ellen  knew  that  Sarah  Emma 
would  be  watching  her,  so  she  kept  her  face 
resolutely  turned  toward  the  Corners.  There 
was  a  perfect  circuit  of  understanding  between 
the  blue  calico  figure  on  the  wall  and  the  black- 
skirted  figure  on  the  road. 

"She's  lyin'  low  to  come  back  and  wash  up 
that  kettle,  jest  as  soon  as  she  thinks  I'm  gone 
for  the  tablecloth,"  thought  Sarah  Emma. 


IO  A    MASTER-HAND    AT    BEES 

"She's  goin'  to  hurry  home  and  git  that  kettle 
before  I  get  there,"  thought  Mary  Ellen. 

"She  won't  turn  round,  she  knows  I'm 
a-watchin'." 

"She  needn't  think  I'll  turn  round,  I  know 
she'll  stan'  there  till  Doomsday  ef  she  sees  me 
look  round."  So  she  reached  the  hilltop  and 
passed  over,  then  sat  down  on  the  bank  and 
waited  for  a  minute,  then  raising  her  head  a 
little,  she  could  see  through  the  veil  of  grass  tops 
the  blue  figure  on  the  wall.  It  stood  still  a 
little  while  and  then  clambered  down  on  the 
orchard  side  and  ran  across  lots  toward  Jane's. 

Then  Mary  Ellen  got  up  and  ran  down  the 
hill  back  home.  She  had  arranged  a  perfectly 
good  reason  for  going  back:  she  had  purposely 
forgotten  the  money  for  the  tea.  As  she  ran 
she  pictured  it  to  herself:  it  lay  in  the  Lowes- 
toft  sugarbowl  that  had  been  her  great- 
grandmother's;  it  was  now  the  family  treasury. 
She  could  see  with  a  sort  of  inner  sight  the  fifty- 
cent  piece  and  three  silver  quarters  lying  in  the 
bottom;  this  was  her  honey  money  for  the  past 
month.  She  also  saw,  with  equal  distinctness, 
a  big  black  pot  half  full  of  brownish  liquid. 
She  could  even  feel  the  tilt  of  the  pot  that 
would  make  the  liquid  pour  out  when  she  tipped 
it.  She  could  see  herself  going  through  all  the 
motions,  even  to  the  putting  away  of  the  kettle 
in  the  pot  closet. 


A    MASTER-HAND    AT    BEES  II 

The  house  was  dark  in  contrast  to  the  sunny 
day  outside;  the  black  pot  loomed  darkly  on 
the  hearth.  She  deftly  pinned  her  black  skirt 
behind  her,  lifted  the  pot  with  experienced  hand 
and  carried  the  casus  belli  into  the  back  shed, 
set  it  on  the  floor,  ran  for  a  pan  and  squatted 
down  on  her  heels  to  tilt  the  pot.  She  took 
hold  of  the  rim  with  a  firm  hand,  and  glanced 
up. 

She  was  opposite  the  arched  opening  of  the 
wood-shed.  The  garden  was  like  a  sunlit 
picture,  as  quiet  as  a  Sunday.  How  pretty  it 
was!  The  vines  swayed  slightly,  they  hung 
down  like  a  garland  through  which  the  blue  sky 
was  seen. 

"My,"  she  thought,  "but  I  never  did  see  the 
balm  so  red  and  so  full  of  blossoms,  and  do  see 
them  bees,  they're  as  thick  as  spatters,  the 
flowers  fairly  bend  with  'em,  they  are  so  heavy. 
I  guess  we  sha'n't  want  for  honey  this  year.  I 
shouldn't  much  wonder  if  we  got  honey  enough 
to  shingle  the  shed,  it  needs  it.  Do  hear  'em 
hum,  seems  as  ef  the  air  was  full  o'  wings  and 
buzzin*  and  sweet  smells.  Who'd  ever  believe 
them  busy  things  could  sting  sol  I'd  a  sight 
ruther  meet  a  bull  any  day  than  a  bee  ef  it  was 
mad.  Now  Sarah  Emma  is  different  by  nature, 
she's  jest  like  a  bee  herself,  smooth  as  honey  ef 
you  don't  rub  her  the  wrong  way,  and  she  says 
that  same  thing  about  bees,  'Let  'em  alone,' 


12  A    MASTER-HAND   AT    BEES 

"  «. 

says  she,  'and  they'll  let  you  alone,  rile  'em 
and  they'll  sting.'  She  don't  never  seem  to 
rub  'em  the  wrong  way  and  they  don't  never 
sting  her.  She  certainly  is  a  sister  to  bees. 
My!  but  wouldn't  that  make  her  mad  ef  I  said 
so  to  her,  and  she  so  fond  of  'em,  too.  I  s'pose 
I've  been  a-rubbin'  her  the  wrong  way  all  the 
mornin',  all  'long  o'  that  ol'  pot.  I  declare 
for't,  I'm  ashamed,  I'll  jest  leave  it  stand 
for  her  to  wash.  I  shouldn't  never  have  seen 
it  this  way  except  for  them  bees.  I  dunno  as 
they've  never  taught  me  to  be  busy,  but  they 
certainly  have  said  something  to  me  to-day. 
It  does  seem  a  pity  to  rile  bees,  jest  for  the  sake 
of  rilin'  'em,  when  you  know  fur  certain  they'll 
sting  back  every  time,  I  dunno  as  I  care  who 
washes  that  pot,  I  don't  believe  I  ever  did  care 
all  along  only  Sarah  Emma  is  so  set.  Wall! 
all  I've  got  to  say  is  that  ef  she  is  a  bee,  she's 
got  to  be  treated  as  such," 

And  now  setting  the  pot  respectfully  back 
on  the  hearth  she  went  for  the  second  time  up 
over  the  hill,  for  the  tea- 
Sarah  Emma  had  not  been  able  to  get  away 
from  Jane's  as  soon  as  she  expected,  so  she  came 
hurrying  back  through  the  orchard,  the  table 
cloth  held  carefully  before  her  for  fear  of  mussing 
it,  her  eyes  strained  to  catch  sight  of  the  door. 
When  she  saw  Mary  Ellen's  back  going  up  the 
road,  wrath  filled  her  soul,  wrath  all  the  greater 


A    MASTER-HAND    AT    BEES  IJ 

because  she  had  expected  this  very  thing.  She 
ran  through  the  garden  and  into  the  kitchen. 

She  would  not  look  at  the  hearth  where  she 
expected  not  to  see  the  kettle,  till  she  had  care 
fully  laid  the  tablecloth  on  the  dresser,  then 
she  turned  with  a  rigid  expectancy.  There  stood 
the  kettle.  She  went  to  it  and  looked  in — it  had 
not  been  emptied !  She  looked  around  the  room 
as  if  she  expected  something  to  happen,  a  sign 
from  Heaven,  some  writing  on  the  wall.  Was 
the  pot  bewitched?  Mary  Ellen  must  have 
come  back  to  empty  it! 

Finally  with  a  long  breath  she  said  to  the  pot, 
"Well,  I'm  beat,  nothing  in  all  my  life  so  queer 
as  this  has  happened.  What  ever  brung  Mary 
Ellen  back?" 

She  trembled  as  she  emptied  the  pot,  almost 
disappointed  at  her  victory. 

The  Sewing  Circle  that  afternoon  was  a  great 
success.  The  minister's  wife  told  about  the 
women  and  their  work  all  over  the  country. 
"Why!  you  will  hardly  believe  it,  but  they  study 
api-culture  and  get  a  living  raising  bees,"  she 
concluded,  as  a  staggerer. 

"That  would  suit  you,"  said  Mary  Ellen  to 
Sarah  Emma.  Then  she  turned  to  the  minis 
ter's  wife  and  said  proudly,  in  spite  of  herself, 
"Sarah  Emma  has  jest  hived  a  swarm  of  bees 
this  mornin'  without  a  soul  to  help  her;  I'm 
dretful  'fraid  of  bees." 


14  A    MASTER-HAND    AT    BEES 

"You?"  exclaimed  the  city  woman,  "you! 
why,  you  never  could!" 

"  I  dunno  why  I  shouldn't,"  said  Sarah  Emma 
stitching  on  her  gingham  apron  with  vim. 

"What!  actually  handle  bees.  Have  you 
studied  api-culture?" 

"No,  I  ain't  studied  no  culture  about  nothing; 
but  I  never  could  see  why  folks  make  such  a 
fuss  over  bees.  I  should  think  that  anybody 
with  any  gumption  at  all  could  handle  a  passel 
of  bees  and  hive  'em,  too,  fur  that  matter. 
What's  been  a-puzzlin'  me  lately  is  how  some 
folks  learns  to  handle  human  critters.  It 
seems  to  come  by  nature  to  some  folks.  I  ain't 
any  hand  at  it." 

Sarah  Emma  glanced  at  Mary  Ellen  and  the 
latter  said  with  a  proud  toss  of  the  head,  "Sarah 
Emma  is  a  master-hand  at  bees." 


AN  ANCESTRAL  INVASION 

DANIEL  GRACE  walked  slowly  down 
a  street  in  Perth  Amboy,  scanning  each 
house  as  he  passed.  He  was  trying 
to  identify  one  that  he  had  seen  but  once,  and 
that  some  years  before;  he  had  a  memory  of 
it  as  a  large,  square  house,  with  many  windows 
in  which  were  small  greenish  panes  of  glass. 

When  he  came  to  a  certain  house,  set  a  little 
farther  back  from  the  street  than  the  others, 
he  recognized  it  and  walked  up  the  straight  path 
to  the  door  and  pulled  the  bell-handle;  he  heard 
the  unmusical  tinkle  in  the  hall  immediately 
behind  the  door,  and  it  came  into  his  memory 
that  he  had  noticed  that  same  jangle  when  he 
had  been  there  before. 

"Dear  me,"  was  his  thought,  "here  it  is  ten 
years  since  we  left  the  furniture  stored  here 
and  we  thought  at  the  time  that  we  should  go 
to  housekeeping  the  very  next  year!" 

"Good  morning."  These  words  came  from 
within  through  the  crack  of  the  door  which  had 
been  quietly  opened  just  wide  enough  to  speak 
through.  The  hand  that  held  the  door  open 
had  a  detached  look,  and  the  voice  hardly 

is 


l6  AN    ANCESTRAL    INVASION 

seemed  to  belong  to  any  one,  as  the  speaker 
stood  back  where  she  could  not  be  seen. 

Mr.  Grace  waited  a  moment  and  then,  as 
the  door  remained  almost  closed,  he  said,  "Good 
morning,  can  you  tell  me  if  Mrs.  Gerrish  is  at 
home,  Mrs.  Thomas  Gerrish?" 

"Yes,  she  is." 

There  was  no  movement  of  invitation,  no 
apparent  intention  of  asking  his  errand,  so  he 
added,  "I  would  like  to  speak  with  her  please." 
Waiting  for  another  embarrassed  moment  he 
added,  "May  I  come  in?" 

The  door  was  reluctantly  opened  and  he 
thought  that  he  recognized  the  woman  who 
stood  there  as  the  one  that  he  had  come  to 
see. 

"You  are  Mrs.  Gerrish,  are  you  not?  I  am 
Mr.  Grace." 

The  woman  did  not  speak  but  led  the  way 
toward  the  room  on  the  right  of  the  hallway. 
If  Daniel  Grace  had  been  left  to  himself  he 
would  have  said  that  the  family  lived  on  the 
left  side  of  the  hall,  and  that  he  had  rented  the 
rooms  on  the  right  to  store  his  furniture  in,  but 
the  doors  on  both  sides  were  open  and  evidently 
the  family  occupied  the  whole  lower  floor.  He 
resented  the  idea  that  his  furniture  had  been 
shifted  without  notification,  for  Daniel  Grace 
was  a  very  exact  and  methodical  man. 

The  room  that  he  was  shown  into  was  large 


AN   ANCESTRAL   INVASION  IJ 

and  sunny;  it  had  a  most  friendly  and  attractive 
look;  it  was  homelike,  even  to  his  critical  and 
conservative  taste;  he  had  a  memory  of  quite 
an  opposite  impression  when  he  had  been  there 
before;  then  it  had  looked  arid  and  poverty- 
stricken. 

The  woman  excused  herself  for  a  moment,  and 
as  she  left  the  room  he  was  growingly  sure  that 
she  was  Mrs.  Gerrish,  the  very  one  with  whom 
he  had  made  the  arrangements  about  the  stor 
age  ten  years  ago. 

He  heard  a  quiet,  short  conference  with  some 
one  in  the  hall,  and  the  outer  door  was  shut  care 
fully;  he  had  a  sudden  fear  that  she  had  gone  out. 

As  he  waited  for  her  to  come  back  he  went 
over  in  his  mind  the  manner  in  which  the  furni 
ture  had  been  crated,  boxed,  barrelled,  or  bur- 
lapped,  how  each  piece  had  been  plainly  stencilled 
with  his  name  and  business  address,  in  a  method 
ical  way.  There  must  have  been  enough  furni 
ture  to  fill  two  or  three  good-sized  rooms,  and 
on  account  of  fire  risk  the  stipulation  had  been 
made  that  the  storerooms  should  be  on  the 
ground  floor. 

These  people  must  have  taken  advantage  of 
him  and  moved  his  belongings  upstairs.  A 
high-handed  proceeding! 

Now  Daniel  had  not  a  sharply  observing  mind 
or  rather  his  mind  was  not  one  for  gathering 
rapid  impressions.  Given  his  own  time  he  could 


l8  AN   ANCESTRAL    INVASION 

observe  accurately,  and  he  could  reconstruct 
the  past  in  detail  and  with  exactitude. 

He  sat  facing  the  window  through  which  the 
sun  shone  with  a  dazzling  brightness.  This 
had  a  bewildering  effect,  but  when  Daniel's 
eyes  had  become  accustomed  to  it,  so  that  he 
could  see  plainly,  he  found  himself  face  to  face 
with  a  familiar  sofa,  and  also  face  to  face  with  an 
unbelievable  fact. 

The  sofa  looked  at  once  familiar  and  un 
familiar,  as  a  friend  might  look,  seen  under  new 
and  unexpected  circumstances,  especially  if  pre 
sented  suddenly  to  the  consciousness. 

And  sitting  there,  Daniel  Grace  had  to  accept 
with  amazement  the  astonishing  fact  that  he 
was  sitting  opposite  to  his  own  sofa — that  in 
timate  though  inanimate  friend  of  a  lifetime. 
"//  isy  it  is  our  own  sofa!" 

He  took  a  grave  and  disapproving  survey 
of  the  room.  This  inspection  resulted  in  many 
revelations  and  identifications. 

He  was  in  a  room  completely  furnished  with 
his  own  belongings  which  he  himself  had  crated 
and  otherwise  protected — his  household  goods 
or  gods;  to  him  they  were  gods,  for  all  the  pieces 
were  ancestral,  all  had  personal  associations  of 
an  honourable  kind. 

To  be  a  Grace  was  an  honourable  estate,  and 
to  belong  to  a  Grace  as  near  to  honour  as  any 
thing  inanimate  could  attain. 


AN   ANCESTRAL   INVASION  19 

With  his  hands  clutching  the  arms  of  his 
chair,  literally  his  own  chair,  he  made  a  survey 
of  the  room.  He  was  sitting  in  a  Grace  chair 
opposite  a  Grace  sofa,  one  that  had  been  his 
mother's  before  she  married.  She  had  been  a 
Tyndale,  a  name  of  equal  distinction  with  Grace. 

Over  and  behind  the  sofa  hung  an  oval  mirror 
which  quite  filled  the  space  between  two  win 
dows.  He  had  known  this  mirror  intimately 
since  his  childhood;  its  oval  shape  was  to  him 
quite  unlike  all  other  mirrors  in  the  world.  It 
was  and  always  had  been  THE  MIRROR, 
whose  distinguished  lot  had  been  to  reflect  the 
Grace  lineaments  and  to  adorn  the  Grace  wall. 

Lying  carelessly  on  the  sofa  was  a  guitar, 
delicate  with  the  softly  mellowed  surface  of  an 
old  and  aristocratic  instrument.  He  followed 
with  his  affronted  eyes  the  familiar  tracery  of 
mother-of-pearl  that  outlined  its  form.  This 
was  the  guitar  that  Mrs.  Grace  had  played 
upon  in  her  maiden  days,  it  was  the  sacred  in 
strument  upon  which  she  had  tinkled  the  ro 
mantic  music  that  had  beguiled  the  hours  of 
courtship  on  moonlight  evenings.  A  guitar 
fragrant  with  memories  of  June  and  roses. 

The  sun  fell  full  upon  the  instrument — it 
broadly  emphasized  the  brash  blue  ribbon  that 
had  replaced  the  dim  blue  of  his  memory. 

The  Grace  piano  filled  one  space  at  the  end 
of  the  room,  and  through  the  door  he  could  see 


2O  AN    ANCESTRAL    INVASION 

into  a  dining  room  where  the  noble  outlines  of 
his  own  mahogany  sideboard  dominated,  the 
sideboard  that  was  brought  over  from  England 
by  his  great-great-grandfather. 

Daniel's  eyes  fell  to  the  floor — he  was  inade 
quate  to  cope  with  these  iniquitous  discrepan 
cies,  this  domesticating  of  the  Grace  furniture 
in  this  alien  household.  His  tenderest  memo 
ries  were  being  desecrated  and  profaned. 

His  eyes,  physically  speaking,  were  fixed  on 
the  carpet,  but  mentally  he  was  surveying  the 
past  and  trying  to  penetrate  into  the  future. 

Suddenly  his  eyes  awakened  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  tracing  the  pattern  of  the  carpet;  it 
was  an  old  Grace  carpet,  rich  and  heavy  in 
design,  where  roses  mocked  at  art  and  nature. 
But  they  mocked  not  at  Daniel;  every  thread 
in  the  carpet  was  sacred  to  him. 

The  wandering  garlands  of  flowers  had  been 
trodden  into  gray  uncertainty  by  the  feet  of 
strangers,  there  were  sordid  reminders  of  cross 
ings  and  recrossings. 

Daniel  raised  shocked  eyes  and  saw,  hung 
upon  the  wall,  the  family  portraits.  The 
frames  were  tarnished  but  forever  dignified 
by  the  enclosed  portraits. 

There  were  Jonathan  and  his  wife — the 
maternal  grandparents.  There  was  Governor 
Grace — his  grandfather,  and  hanging  next  to 
him  was  he  himself  as  a  small  boy  in  a  white 


AN    ANCESTRAL   INVASION  21 

suit,  posed  before  a  parted  blue  drapery  which 
revealed  a  landscape  in  the  distance.  On  an 
other  wall  hung  the  beautiful  portraits  of  his 
two  aunts,  Eleanor  and  Marianna. 

It  was  with  actual  physical  misery  that  he 
dully  surveyed  this  annexation  of  the  Grace 
ancestors;  he  wiped  his  face  with  his  cambric 
handkerchief;  he  felt  as  if  he  were  trying  to 
waken  himself  from  a  terrifying  dream. 

He  tried  to  formulate  an  adequate  protest 
to  make  to  this  Mrs.  Gerrish.  Would  she  ever 
come  back?  Had  she  gone  out  to  avoid  him? 
He  stared  at  the  bookcase  full  of  familiar  books, 
and  then  he  heard  her  come  back  into  the  room. 
He  turned  to  confront  her. 

She  sat  down  in  a  Grace  chair,  and  adjusted 
her  dress  with  a  certain  formality,  and  with  the 
manner  of  one  who  came  to  an  encounter  not 
unprepared,  and  yet  with  a  baffling  sort  of 
inertia  that  had  the  quality  of  a  barrier. 

The  silence  was  so  long  that  at  last  he  broke 
it  almost  violently.  He  tried  not  to  see  his  famil 
iars,  the  chairs  and  pictures,  they  embarrassed 
him,  but  instead  of  the  arraignment  he  had  com 
posed,  he  heard  himself  say,  with  the  formal 
politeness  of  a  Grace  at  his  best,  "I  hope  that 
I  shall  not  embarrass  you  but  I  have  come  to  see 
about  the  furniture  that  I  stored  with  you  some 
ten  years  ago." 

"Yes."     That  was  all  the  response  that  she 


22  AN    ANCESTRAL    INVASION 

gave.   It  was  hardlycomplete,consideringthecir- 
cumstances,but  the  woman  added  no  other  word. 

"I  see,"  he  now  said  with  forced  courage, 
determined  to  face  the  situation  and  to  accuse 
her  directly  of  fraud,  or  at  any  rate  of  violation 
of  her  contract,  "I  see" — he  hesitated,  then 
substituted  something  quite  other  from  his 
originally  intended  sentence,  "I  see  that  you 
occupy  both  sides  of  the  house."  This  was 
inane,  and  not  likely  to  advance  him  on  his 
difficult  way. 

"Yes,"  she  assented,  and  silence  fell  again. 
Now  fully  recognizing  his  inadequacy  he  de 
termined  to  drop  all  discussion  and  merely  to 
give  notice  of  the  removal  of  his  furniture. 

"I  think,  if  it  is  perfectly  convenient  to  you, 
Mrs.  Gerrish,  that  I  will  have  the  furniture  "- 
he  had  almost  said  boxed,  but  thought  better 
of  it  and  said  "removed."  He  felt  that  accord 
ing  to  all  ethical  standards  it  really  was  boxed 
as  he  had  left  it.  Then  he  reiterated  fatuously, 
"At  your  convenience,  of  course." 

"When  should  you  think  of  sending  for  it?" 

"I  will  send  for  it  day  after  to-morrow,"  he 
said,  resolutely. 

"I  am  afraid  that  I  could  not  be  ready  by 
then."  Mrs.  Gerrish  said  this  quite  as  if  she 
had  taken  him  at  his  word  and  would  let  his 
convenience  wait  upon  her  own. 

This  stiffened  him  up;  he  could  feel  the  blood 


AN   ANCESTRAL   INVASION  2J 

beating  in  his  temples,  but  instead  of  saying 
as  he  knew  that  he  ought  to,  "I  really  must 
insist  upon  having  it  at  once,"  he  sat  in  uncom 
fortable  silence.  Mrs.  Gerrish  also  was  silent; 
he  could  hear  the  firm  ticking  of  his  grand 
mother's  clock  where  it  stood  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs  measuring  off  time  in  its  impersonal 
manner.  The  sound  drove  him  to  speech: 
"When  will  it  be  convenient  for  you  to  have  the 
furniture  removed?" 

She  thought  for  a  moment  and  then  said, 
"My  daughter  Luella  is  to  be  married  in  two 
weeks,  on  the  second  of  June." 

:'This  is  certainly  very  extraordinary!" 
ejaculated  Daniel. 

"My  daughter  is  not  very  strong  and  I  should 
be  sorry  to  have  confusion  in  the  house  at  this 
time." 

She  spoke  very  quietly  but  Daniel  felt  that 
she  meant  every  word  to  tell  upon  him. 

He  thought  for  a  moment,  then  his  irritation 
swept  him  into  saying  abruptly,  "I  am  afraid 
that  I  cannot  wait." 

"Luella  has  gone  out  for  a  few  minutes,  she 
may  come  in  at  any  time,  I  should  be  sorry  to 
have  her  know  about  the  furniture,"  said  Mrs. 
Gerrish. 

"Do  you  mean  sorry  to  have  her  know  that 
I  am  going  to  take  my  own  furniture  from  your 
house?" 


24  AN   ANCESTRAL   INVASION 

"No,  sorry  to  have  her  know  that  it  does  not 
belong  to  us." 

"You  do  not  mean,  Madam,  it  is  not  possible 
that  your  daughter  thinks  that  you  own  all 
this!"  He  gave  a  sweep  with  his  arm  that 
seemed  in  its  dignity  to  embrace  and  gather 
together,  to  rescue  once  for  all  these  matchless 
Grace  belongings. 

"Luella  has  always  liked  these  things  better 
than  all  the  others;  she  has  been  brought  up  to 
dust  and  to  take  care  of  them,  and  to  see  that 
they  were  all  in  order." 

Good  heavens,  what  could  he  say!  Just  then 
the  front  door  opened  and  closed.  Mrs.  Gerrish 
and  Daniel  looked  at  each  other,  almost  fur 
tively.  He  had  a  bewildered  feeling  that  he 
was  in  a  conspiracy  to  keep  Luella  in  ignorance 
of  his  true  reason  for  coming  to  the  house,  that, 
in  short,  preposterous  as  it  was,  he  was  to  help 
in  the  fraud,  to  forswear  for  a  time  his  owner 
ship,  to  enter  into  this  combination  against 
himself. 

Luella  was  a  slender  young  thing  and  she 
slipped  into  the  room,  not  shyly  but  as  noise 
lessly  as  a  breath  of  air.  She  looked  too  young 
and  too  unaware  to  be  married,  and  much  too 
young  and  innocent  to  be  a  part"  to  her 
mother's  deceit. 

Her  mother  took  her  by  the  hand  and  said, 
"This  is  Luella,  Mr.  Grace." 


AN    ANCESTRAL   INVASION  1$ 

The  manner  of  the  introduction  seemed,  in 
some  indefinable  way,  to  put  Luella  into  his 
keeping,  to  bespeak  for  her  his  consideration, 
to  emphasize  her  youth,  her  innocence,  to  make 
of  her  a  potential  lamb  to  a  possible  sacrifice. 

"Luella,"  said  her  mother,  "run  and  put  on  a 
thinner  dress." 

"The  white  one?"  This  was  a  scarcely  audi 
ble  question,  hardly  more  than  the  moving  of 
the  lips,  but  Daniel  heard  it  like  a  keen,  thin 
sound  penetrating  the  fog  of  his  bewilderment. 

Then  Luella  went  out  and  he  straightened  him 
self,  to  him  this  was  his  last  opportunity  of  put 
ting  matters  right,  and  probably  Mrs.  Gerrish 
had  sent  her  away  on  purpose  that  they  might 
have  a  last  word. 

Not  a  movement  on  her  part;  he  looked  at  her, 
she  sat  quietly  there  without  the  slightest  re 
vealing  expression;  she  just  waited  for  Luella 
to  come  back.  Her  face  was  of  a  pale  plump 
ness,  impassive,  inscrutable. 

She  rose,  after  a  moment,  and  slightly  lowered 
the  window-shades.  Tempering  the  light  made 
a  unity  of  the  room,  and  the  portraits  came  into 
more  prominence  as  the  frames  reflected  less 
light.  The  faces  seemed  to  glow  from  the  can 
vas,  they  might  well  be  going  to  take  part  in 
this  drama. 

Luella  came  in  again  with  that  half-sliding, 
half-inquiring  motion  which  seemed  a  part  of  her 


26  AN    ANCESTRAL    INVASION 

individuality;  she  was  arrested  by  her  mother's 
voice  just  as  she  stood  in  front  of  the  portrait 
of  Daniel's  Aunt  Marianna  Grace. 

Daniel  was  struck  by  the  singular  sense  of 
arrested  motion  expressed  in  Luella's  figure; 
he  glanced  at  Mrs.  Gerrish,  feeling  that  in  some 
way  she  was  not  only  directing  Luella's  move 
ments  but  also  that  she  in  a  sense  controlled  his 
own  observation.  He  felt  that  his  eyes  were 
being  directed  by  some  compelling  force  to 
look  first  at  his  Aunt  Marianna's  portrait,  and 
then  at  the  younger,  appealing  face  of  Luella; 
then  he  was  suddenly  struck  with  the  strong 
suggestion  of  likeness  between  the  two. 

He  was  shocked  to  admit  this  even  to  himself, 
and  he  knew  that  the  only  thing  to  do  now  was 
to  cut  the  unpleasant  interview  short  off,  and 
to  go  away,  sending  someone  else,  less  intimately 
connected  with  the  transaction,  to  recover  the 
goods,  move  them,  and  put  an  end  to  this  dis 
graceful  predicament. 

But  he  frustrated  his  own  design  by  lingering 
and  saying  against  his  own  volition,  "What  a 
curious  resemblance  there  is  between  your 
daughter  and  the  portrait  above  her." 

Luella  smiled  at  her  mother  and  then  glancing 
fondly  at  the  portrait  said,  "That  is  a  portrait 
of  my  favourite  aunt.  She  isn't  living  you  know, 
but  I  have  always  loved  her  better  than  all 
the  others."  Luella  in  her  diminutive  way  re- 


AN    ANCESTRAL   INVASION  2J 

peated  his  own  sweep  of  the  arm  and  gathered 
to  herself  this  whole  sheaf  of  Grace  ancestors. 
Then  she  sat  down  on  the  well-remembered 
Grace  footstool,  directly  under  the  portrait. 

It  was  extraordinary  to  see  the  child  of  Mrs. 
Gerrish  sitting  with  her  young  and  happy  face 
under  the  ancestral  Marianna,  challenging  his 
recognition  of,  and  acquiescence  in,  the  fact  that 
there  was  a  strong  likeness.  She  evidently  ex 
pected  from  him  a  sympathetic  pleasure. 

He  felt  dizzy,  he  was  being  ridiculously  led 
into  acts  contrary  to  his  intentions;  he  wanted 
to  protest,  he  wanted  also  to  find  out  how  much 
Luella  was  a  free  agent  or  the  dupe  of  that  im 
possible,  preposterous  imposter,  her  mother. 

Then  Luella  with  a  little  excitement  in  her 
voice  took  the  lead.  "I  know  I  look  like  my 
aunt,  everybody  says  so.  I  made  this  dress 
myself  just  like  hers  in  the  picture,  don't  you 
see?" 

Daniel  did  see,  and  admitted  it  with  a  nod,  all 
the  while  wondering  if,  after  all,  it  was  not  the 
dress  that  made  Luella  look  like  Aunt  Marianna. 
He  regretted  that  even  his  nod  of  admission 
had  still  further  entangled  him  in  the  fantastic 
web  of  circumstance  that  was  being  woven 
around  him,  and  was  Luella  in  it?  or  only  an 
other  victim! 

"You  see,"  she  went  on,  folding  her  slender 
hands  in  evident  security  of  his  interest,  and 


28  AN    ANCESTRAL    INVASION 

yet  with  a  little  glance  of  dependence  at  her 
mother,  "you  see  my  Aunt  Cecilia  died  when  I 
was  very  young,  she  never  saw  me  but  I  was 
named  after  her.  Cecilia  is  my  middle  name. 
She  left  me  her  portrait;  she  was  only  twenty- 
seven  when  she  died,  and  she  left  me  all  her 
things:  her  portrait  and  her  books  and  the  sofa 
and  the  piano,  and  even  her  guitar.  I  have  her 
old  music  pieces,  too,  and  I  have  learned  to  play 
on  her  guitar.  I  wrote  a  little  song  about  her; 
I  sing  it  to  her  sometimes  when  I  sit  here.  She 
used  to  sing,  too." 

"I  had  an  aunt  also,  who  died  young." 
Daniel  announced  this  stiffly  in  a  sort  of  an 
tagonistic  competition. 

"Tell  me  about  her,"  pleaded  Luella  with 
ready  and  sweet  sympathy. 

It  would  not  do  to  relinquish  his  beautiful 
Aunt  Marianna  into  the  hands  of  the  Gerrishes, 
so  he  added,  "My  Aunt  Marianna  was  very 
beautiful  and  lovely,  she" — he  hesitated — "she, 
too,  died  young,  before  she  was  thirty."  He 
spoke  with  difficulty  as  if  his  features  were 
stiff;  his  speech  was  mechanical  and  his  lips 
immobile.  Luella  leaned  forward,  clasping  her 
hands  more  tightly  together.  "Tell  me  more." 

Here  was  a  new  trouble — his  Aunt  Marianna 
had  died  of  a  broken  heart,  so  the  family  ro 
mance  ran,  a  tale  entirely  of  sweet  obedience 
to  parental  authority,  the  renouncing  of  an 


AN   ANCESTRAL   INVASION  29 

unworthy  lover,  an  early  death,  a  bier  of  lilies, 
and  fragrant,  pathetic  memories.  This  was 
not  a  tale  to  tell  this  strange  young  girl  who 
claimed  this  very  aunt  for  her  own,  as  she  sat 
under  the  portrait,  and  who  herself  was  to 
be  married  so  soon.  It  was  still  more  of  an 
outrage  to  think  of  revealing  sacred  Grace  memo 
ries  to  these  strange  people,  but  nevertheless 
he  said  briefly,  "She  had  an  unhappy  love  affair; 
she  never  recovered  from  the  grief  of  it."  Thus 
shamelessly  did  the  correct  Daniel  betray  the 
Grace  history. 

"Did  she  die  of  a  broken  heart?  Oh!  how  sad, 
how  very  sad.  I  did  not  know  that  any  one  ever 
did  really  die  of  a  broken  heart,  I  thought  it  hap 
pened  only  in  books!  Mother,  you  don't  sup 
pose  that  Aunt  Cecilia  died  of  a  broken  heart. 
I  never  knew  how  she  died;  you  don't  suppose 
she  did!" 

No  human  being  with  a  trace  of  a  heart 
could  turn  and  say  to  her,  "Luella,  you  never 
had  an  Aunt  Cecilia,  or,  if  you  did  have  one,  this 
is  not  a  portrait  of  her.  This  is  the  portrait 
of  my  own  Aunt  Marianna  Grace;  it  is  only  by 
chance  that  you  look  like  her.  I  am  going  to 
take  the  portrait  away.  She  isn't  yours.  It 
is  all  a  mistake — or  worse.  She  is  my  aunt, 
not  yours."  If  he  could  not  say  this  what  was 
to  be  done! 

He  rose  suddenly  and  looking  at  his  watch 


3O  AN   ANCESTRAL   INVASION 

he  said  he  must  defer  business  till  another  day 
as  he  must  hurry  to  catch  a  train. 

Luella  laid  her  hand  confidingly  in  his  at 
parting,  and  Mrs.  Gerrish  followed  him  to  the 
door,  and  as  he  went  out  he  heard  her  say,  in 
colourless,  low  tones,  "You  can  have  the  furni 
ture  moved  on  the  tenth  of  June." 

He  always  afterward  remembered  this 
woman  as  large,  with  a  white,  impassive  face 
showing  as  an  opaque  blur,  framed  in  the 
partly  open  door,  and  he  could  hear  the  low, 
even  words,  "You  can  have  the  furniture 
moved  on  the  tenth  of  June." 

Daniel  had  no  keen  sense  of  humour,  but  he 
laughed  derisively  at  himself  as  he  went  down 
the  street.  To  have  been  so  befuddled  and 
bamboozled  by  that  pasty-faced  woman,  not 
only  to  be  kept  waiting  for  his  furniture  now, 
but  to  have  had  it  used  so  many  years,  to  have 
no  explanation,  no  apology!  To  have  been 
drawn  into  a  conspiracy,  to  have  been  forced 
to  lend  the  Grace  furniture  for  a  wedding,  to 
have  allowed  that  young  girl  to  rob  him  of  his 
aunt,  to  have  even  seemed  to  have  counte 
nanced  this  disgusting  fraud!  Good  Heavens! 
It  was  incredible! 

On  June  tenth  Daniel  went  to  Perth  Amboy. 
He  had  regained  a  certain  amount  of  firmness 
and  had  matured  a  scheme  for  at  least  getting 
at  the  reasons  for  the  desecration  of  his  property, 


AN   ANCESTRAL   INVASION  31 

and  also  for  finding  out  how  much  Luella  really 
knew.  In  his  heart  of  hearts  he  wanted  to  ex 
onerate  her  from  all  complicity. 

The  house  in  Amboy  had  its  shades  down, 
there  did  not  seem  to  be  any  one  there;  there 
was  that  indescribable  air  of  aloneness  that 
marks  an  unoccupied  house.  A  neighbour  was 
evidently  on  the  watch  for  him  and  came  run 
ning  over  with  the  keys  in  her  hand;  she  opened 
the  front  door.  He  saw  that  the  house  had  been 
dismantled,  the  rooms  at  the  right  were  full  of 
furniture,  crated,  barrelled,  boxed,  and  bur- 
lapped.  Each  bundle  was  stencilled  with  his 
name  and  address,  exactly  as  he  remembered 
leaving  it  ten  years  before. 

The  neighbour  was  saying,  ''Mrs.  Gerrish 
left  yesterday.  Luella  was  married  on  the 
second  of  June;  she  told  me  to  tell  you  that  she 
looked  exactly  like  her  aunt,  the  one  she  was 
named  after.  She  did  look  like  the  picture,  but 
to  my  thinking  she  would  have  looked  prettier 
in  a  more  modern  dress.  She  always  was  just 
daft  over  that  aunt  of  hern." 

"Did  Mrs.  Gerrish  tell  you  what  was  to  be 
done  with  the  furniture?" 

"No,  she  said  you  would  understand  and  to 
tell  you  that  she  was  much  obliged  to  you,  she 
said  that  you  knew  all  about  it,  that  was  all; 
she  never  was  one  for  many  words." 

"Did  she  leave  her  address  with  you?" 


J2  AN    ANCESTRAL   INVASION 

"Why, no, don't  you  know  where  the  furniture 
is  to  go?" 

"Yes,  I  know  where  it  belongs,  if  it  is  to  be 
sent  where  it  was  originally  intended  to  go.  I 
certainly  ought  to  know,  if  anybody  does." 
This  was  the  last  feeble  protest  made  to  himself, 
for  the  neighbour  apparently  was  only  a  mes 
senger  as  ignorant  of  the  Gerrishes  as  he  himself 
was. 

"Are  you  any  relation  of  the  Gerrishes?"  the 
neighbour  inquired  curiously. 

"No,"  he  said,  "/  am  not  in  the  remotest  degree 
related  to  them"  then  he  added,  "I  am — I  happen 
to  be,  in  this  matter,  the  agent  of  Mrs.  Gerrish." 

"My!  ain't  he  stiff!"  said  she  as  she  went 
away  and  left  him  alone  with  his  recovered 
ancestors. 


THE  UNDOING  OF  THE  BURGLAR 

MRS.  CLARA  G.  BROWN  is  a  widow. 
She  believes  in  clubs,  in  alliances,  and 
in  reciprocity  days.  She  gives  much 
time  and  thought  to  these  activities,  and  she  was 
the  originator  of  the  saying — "  Show  me  a  woman 
and  I  will  tell  you  whether  she  belongs  to  a  club 
or  not."  Sometimes  she  varies  this  by  saying, 
"Show  me  a  club  and  I  will  tell  you  what  sort 
of  woman  belongs  to  it."  This  last  aphorism 
occurred  to  her  when  bridge-whist  clubs  came, 
and  came  to  stay.  They  had  to  be  accounted 
for. 

Impressions  drifted  into  and  out  of  Mrs. 
Brown's  mind  as  do  ships  into  and  out  of  a 
harbour — leaving  no  trace.  Intellectual  tides 
had^washed  her  through  Orientalism,  Esoteric 
Buddhism,  Theosophy,  and  Transcendentalism, 
into  the  safely  modernized  generalization  that 
mind  is  master  of  all  matters,  great  and  small. 

She  says — "  I  am  broad,  I  have  no  fads.  My 
only  children,  alas!  are  the  children  of  my  brain." 

She  is  the  personification  of  Modern  Woman, 
but  she  still  has  one  weakness,  one  obsession, 
one  miserable  fibre  of  femininity.  Clara  is  afraid 

33 


34         THE    UNDOING    OF   THE    BURGLAR 

of  burglars.  In  vain  has  she  tried  to  eradicate 
this  fear,  in  vain  has  she  followed  the  recipe 
of  one  cult  after  another;  she  cannot  exorcise 
this  humiliating  thought.  She  remains  in  abject 
fear  of  burglars.  Small,  creeping  things,  like 
spiders  and  rodents,  she  has  been  able  utterly 
to  abolish  from  the  corner  of  her  mind  where  fear 
generates;  but  the  burglar  terror,  vivid  and 
tormenting,  always  recurs  at  bedtime. 

She  lives  alone  in  her  pleasant  suburban 
house,  with  one  competent  maid  who  does  the 
cooking,  waits  on  the  table  and  the  door,  and 
at  odd  moments  buttons  and  hooks  Mrs.  Brown 
into  her  well-fitting  waists.  To  be  well-dressed 
is  a  creed  of  Mrs.  Brown's.  She  is  a  socialist, 
just  now,  and  is  willing  to  reciprocate  in  all 
ways;  she  would  gladly  do  up  the  waist  worn  by 
her  maid,  only  in  the  nature  of  things  the  maid 
would  never  think  of  asking  her  to  do  this. 
Really,  the  mutual  duties  of  socialism  easily 
adjust  themselves,  because  the  foot-rule  of 
custom  is  still  in  the  memory  as  a  standard. 

Mrs.  Clara  Brown  always  begins  the  rites  of 
retiring  for  the  night  by  being  unhooked  by  the 
maid,  whom  she  then  dismisses  with  the  injunc 
tion  to  lock  all  the  doors  and  to  put  a  stick  over 
the  hall  window,  for  a  clever  burglar  could  per 
haps  introduce  a  thin-bladed  knife  through  the 
crack  of  that  particular  window  and  press  back 
the  catch. 


THE    UNDOING    OF   THE    BURGLAR         35 

After  the  maid  goes,  Mrs.  Brown  takes  a 
candle  and  looks  under  the  bed.  She  is  a  trifle 
plump,  not  aggressively  so,  but  the  act  of  stoop 
ing  requires  consideration. 

One  night,  two  weeks  ago,  she  lifted  the  val 
ance  of  the  bed  and  peered  underneath.  She 
saw  no  burglar,  but  away  back  she  did  see  a 
small  object.  It  might  possibly  be  a  glove,  or  a 
pair  of  stockings  that  had  slipped  from  the  bed 
on  the  far  side.  It  was  quite  small  and  obscure 
in  the  candlelight.  Her  fear  of  seeing  a  burglar 
being  allayed,  there  came  in  its  place  an  irrita 
tion  at  the  maid's  carelessness.  It  was  sweep 
ing  day,  and  no  corner  should  have  been  over 
looked. 

She  tried  to  reach  the  object  and  couldn't. 
Then  she  got  her  hair-brush  and  tried  to  poke 
it  out,  but  it  was  still  out  of  reach;  so  she  gave 
it  up  and  framed,  in  her  mind,  a  proper  rebuke 
for  the  maid.  She  needed  watching  evidently. 

She  forgot  to  reprove  the  maid  next  morning, 
for  she  went  off  early  to  town.  At  the  club 
there  was  to  be  a  lecture  by  a  learned  Oriental — 
a  Pundit  of  Pundits,  who  was  to  speak  on  the 
"Visualization  of  the  Invisible."  Afterward  a 
luncheon  in  his  honour  was  to  be  given.  Mrs. 
Brown  determined  to  eat  no  meat  on  this  oc 
casion,  out  of  respect  for  the  Pundit's  religion; 
but  she  was  much  perplexed  to  observe  that  he 
partook  liberally  of  all  the  good  things,  includ- 


36         THE    UNDOING    OF   THE    BURGLAR 

ing  meat.  She  made  a  pencil  memorandum  in 
her  gold-trimmed  notebook,  in  her  usual  orderly 
manner,  to  this  effect:  "Ask  Pundit  to  explain 
theory  of  vegetarianism  after  lunch." 

That  evening  a  friend  went  home  with  her  to 
spend  the  night;  a  Mrs.  Parkinson,  of  Hacken- 
sack,  who  was  a  delegate  to  the  Federation  of 
Clubs.  They  talked  late,  and  Clara  was  so 
tired  she  actually  forgot  to  look  under  the  bed, 
and  promptly  fell  asleep. 

About  midnight  she  awoke  with  a  start.  She 
was  sure  that  she  heard  a  stealthy  tread.  She 
lay  awake,  shivering,  with  her  eyes  wide  open, 
but  after  a  time  she  got  hold  of  an  antidotal 
thought,  a  thought  to  banish  fear,  and  finally 
went  to  sleep  with  that  in  her  mind,  like  a 
mental  lozenge.  She  slept  well,  and  in  the  morn 
ing  she  told  her  friend  of  the  occurrence  and 
gave  her  the  formula  for  abolishing  fear.  She 
felt  that  she  had  at  last  "demonstrated"  with 
perfect  success. 

But  the  next  night  the  burglar  idea  came  back 
upon  her  with  appalling  strength.  It  took  all 
her  courage  to  look  under  the  bed  at  all.  There 
was  no  burglar  there,  but  away,  way  back 
against  the  wall  lay  not  only  the  small  object 
she  had  seen  before,  but  also  something  bigger: 
something  that  might  be  a  fur  boa  or  a  scarf,  or 
even  a  small  shawl.  This  seriously  annoyed 
her;  it  kept  her  awake  for  a  long  time,  during 


THE  UNDOING  OF  THE  BURGLAR    37 

which  she  thought  out  a  project  for  the  more 
vigorous  education  of  maids.  She  planned  a 
lecture  to  be  given  at  the  clubs  with  illustrations. 
Also,  through  the  agency  of  the  clubs,  there  was 
to  be  circulated  through  the  kitchens  of  the 
land  a  collection  of  photographs  of  the  best 
Greek  art.  She  believed  that  a  daily,  yes,  an 
hourly  influence  would  emanate  from  these,  in 
which  the  use  of  the  straight  and  the  curved 
line  is  so  splendidly  manifest. 

She  fell  asleep  with  this  uplift  idea  in  her  mind. 
She  called  the  lecture  "The  Minds  of  Maids, 
or  Order  Through  Art."  The  next  day  she 
talked  seriously  with  her  maid  and  sent  her  to 
pick  up  the  things  that  had  fallen  under  the  bed. 
The  maid  came  back  and  said  she  could  find 
nothing  under  the  bed,  but  she  thought  perhaps 
the  bed-clothes  had  slipped  back  and  made  a 
little  heap.  She  had  straightened  them  out 
and  now  they  were  all  properly  tucked  in. 

Mrs.  Clara  Brown  was  not  convinced.  That 
night,  moreover,  there  was  an  even  bigger  heap 
of  something  back  in  the  dark.  A  fur  coat 
or  a  big  ulster  would  look  like  that.  She  took 
a  broom  and  poked  at  it  but  she  couldn't  get  it 
out.  She  sat  on  the  floor  and  wondered  if  her 
nerves  were  giving  way  with  all  her  club  work 
and  this  burglar  fear.  She  was  ashamed  to 
call  the  maid,  and  she  then  and  there  determined 
to  take  a  vacation  just  as  soon  as  the  club  year 


38    THE  UNDOING  OF  THE  BURGLAR 

was  ended.  Next  day,  however,  she  recovered 
her  nerve,  or  a  portion  of  it.  Curiously  enough, 
it  was  no  longer  apprehension  of  seeing  a  bur 
glar  that  agitated  her,  but  the  dread  of  seeing 
more  things  slipped  down  behind  the  bed.  She 
certainly  did  need  a  change! 

That  night  she  held  the  candle  well  away  from 
her;  for,  having  a  frugal  mind,  she  remembered 
that  she  had  on  her  second-best,  black-silk 
skirt.  She  slowly  bent  her  plump  person,  threw 
the  valance  back,  and  looked. 

There  was  the  burglar! 

There  he  was,  one  sinister  eye  fastened  upon 
her,  after  the  manner  of  burglars,  one  hand 
stretched  out  toward  her,  and  in  its  grasp  was  a 
shining  pistol,  its  gaping  muzzle  pointing  straight 
at  her. 

She  sank  slowly  to  the  floor.  She  seemed 
paralyzed;  she  could  not  call  out,  she  could  not 
rise,  she  could  not  seize  the  dinnerbell  that  al 
ways  stood  on  the  table  by  her  bed  for  the  very 
purpose  of  alarming  the  neighbours.  All  her 
plans  were  as  naught  in  the  stupendous  presence 
of  the  burglar. 

"Good  evening,"  said  he. 

"Good  evening,"  returned  Mrs.  Brown,  me 
chanically,  while  the  cold  chills  ran  up  and  down 
her  back.  Then,  as  if  wakened  by  her  own  voice, 
she  tried  to  get  up;  but  the  burglar  said  quietly 
(you  must  remember  that  he  had  a  pistol  in  his 


THE    UNDOING    OF   THE    BURGLAR         39 

hand  loaded  and  cocked):  "Don't  move,  and 
don't  be  frightened;  I  am  not  going  to  hurt  you 
if  you  keep  still." 

Oh,  the  awful  threat  that  lay  behind  those 
words,  the  exact  words  she  had  heard  a  hundred 
times  in  imagination,  the  very  words  that  bur 
glars  always  use  to  hypnotize  their  victims  be 
fore  shooting,  or  tying  them  up  with  cords  and 
putting  gags  in  their  mouths  so  they  can't 
scream. 

"In  fact,"  continued  the  burglar,  "I  can't 
get  out  of  here." 

"Mercy!"  ejaculated  she.     "Are  you  hurt?" 

"No,  I  am  not  exactly  hurt,"  said  he,  "but 
I  am  unfinished." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  unfinished,  and  who 
are  you?" 

"My  name,"  said  he,  "is  C.  C. Mr. 

Carking  Care." 

"What  a  name!"  she  exclaimed.  "I  don't 
believe  it  is  your  name  at  all,  it  doesn't  sound 
like  a  real  name." 

"  It's  all  the  name  I've  got ! "  Then  he  added 
wistfully:  "At  present,  anyway." 

Mrs.  Brown  sat  silently  gazing  at  him.  The 
candle  was  tipped  and  the  drip,  drip  of  the  wax 
was  making  stalagmites  in  her  broad  and  shining 
silk  lap. 

Then  he  went  on,  "I  am  incomplete  as  yet, 
and  it  is  only  this  incompleteness  that  saves 


40         THE    UNDOING    OF   THE    BURGLAR 

you;  I  am,  to  use  the  watchmaker's  phrase,  not 
fully  assembled  yet." 

"I  don't  understand  you,"  said  she,  much 
puzzled,  thinking  the  man  must  be  insane. 

"Why,"  said  he,  "you  made  me!  You  said 
that  a  burglar  was  your  carking  care;  you  often 
said  so,  you  kept  repeating  it,  and  it  is  lucky  for 
you  that  I  am  not  yet  complete.  I  have  de 
veloped  this  far,  and  in  a  few  days,  maybe  to 
morrow,  I  should  have  been  a  full-blown  burglar. 
Of  course  I  never  should  have  been  a  first-class 
burglar,  because  your  mind  is  so  faulty.  Now 
see,"  said  he  with  an  expression  of  disgust,  "just 
see  this  darned  pistol!  It  is  simply  ridiculous. 
Just  such  a  pistol  as  you  would  expect  a  woman 
to  make!  No  gunsmith  in  the  world  would  be 
willing  to  put  his  trade-mark  on  it!  It  is  all 
barrel  and  trigger  and  about  twice  as  long,  and 
as  thick  again,  as  it  should  be,  and  much  too 
shiny;  why,  it  is  perfectly  absurd!"  He  gave 
it  a  contemptuous  jerk. 

Mrs.  Brown  gave  a  start  and  a  little  scream. 

"Pooh!"  said  he;  and  then  went  on:  "And 
just  look  at  me!"  The  command  was  entirely 
unnecessary  for  she  was  looking  at  him  intently. 
"Yes,  just  look  at  me!  Only  one  eye;  you  never 
would  see  but  one  eye  in  your  imagination — one 
eye,  one  black  eye,  sinister  enough  for  a  dozen. 
Don't  you  know  that  some  burglars  have  light 
blue  eyes  as  pleasant  and  innocent  as  a  baby's? 


THE  UNDOING  OF  THE  BURGLAR    4! 

And  there  are  lots  of  other  things  that  you  have 
left  out  entirely,  or  got  wrong.  Just  see  how 
flat  I  am!  You  would  have  rounded  me  out 
after  a  while,  of  course,  but  you  never  in  the 
world  would  have  made  a  good  job  of  me.  I 
am  pretty  much  all  eye,  overcoat,  and  pistol!" 

He  did  look  flat,  she  could  see  that  herself, 
now  that  she  was  calmer.  His  voice  was  dis 
agreeable  and  fault-finding. 

''Well,  anyway,  here  I  am!  You  have  got  me 
so  far,  and  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?" 

"Do  about  it?"  she  echoed. 

"Yes,  do  about  me.  I  am  still  growing,  and 
I  am  bound  to  keep  on  growing  or  shrinking. 
It  all  depends  upon  you." 

"Can't  you  go  away?"  she  suggested. 

"Go  away?  No,  I  can't!  Where  could  I  go 
to,  I  should  like  to  know — in  this  semi-assembled 
condition!" 

"What  can  I  do  about  it?"  asked  she. 

"Why,  disseminate  me;  disembody  me!  I 
must  be  dissipated." 

"Dissipated!  Mercy!"  she  cried.  She  had 
an  abhorrent  vision  of  drinking  and  carousing 
right  there  in  her  own  house. 

"Yes,  if  you  don't  want  a  full-blown  burglar 
in  your  house,  you'd  better  get  rid  of  me,  the 
quicker  the  better.  Now  you  stop  looking 
under  the  bed  at  night,  and  go  about  your  busi 
ness,  saying  to  yourself  all  the  time:  'There 


42         THE    UNDOING    OF   THE    BURGLAR 

is  no  burglar  under  the  bed;  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  burglar.  I  dispel  the  error;  I  rid 
myself  of  the  burglar  thought.' 

"This  is  what  you  must  keep  saying  every 
time  your  mind  sets  toward  the  burglar  idea. 
You  must  demonstrate  for  courage  and  truth. 

"You  must  do  this  for  ten  days,  three  hours  a 
day.  It  has  taken  you  about  ten  days  to  as 
semble  me,  and  of  course  this  life-long  fear  of 
burglars  has  tended  to  make  me  particularly 
robust,  unusually  so.  Very  likely  the  pistol 
idea  in  your  mind  will  be  the  hardest  to  elimi 
nate.  If  that  remains,  you  must  give  yourself 
a  special  treatment  for  it. 

"And  during  all  this  time  you  must  not  look 
under  the  bed  once.  If  you  do,  you  will  add  just 
so  much  to  my  permanence  and  my  persistence." 

"But  don't  you  see,  I  can't  bear  to  think  of 
you  under  the  bed  all  this  time,  while  I  am  treat 
ing  for  you." 

"You  can't  think  of  me  as  being  under  the 
bed  if  you  don't  think  of  me  at  all,  can  you?" 

He  said  this  quite  rudely,  and  continued: 
"What  I'm  trying  to  make  you  understand  is, 
that  you  mustn't  think  of  me  at  all,  not  once. 
And  if  you  follow  my  instructions  exactly,  I 
ought  to  be  flattened  out  of  existence  in  about 
ten  days  or  so;  say  twelve  days  to  be  sure  that 
there  isn't  a  trace  of  me  remaining." 

"I  will  try,"  said  Mrs.  Brown,  meekly. 


THE    UNDOING    OF   THE    BURGLAR         43 

"Then  you'd  better  begin  at  once.  Now  say 
after  me:  'There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  burglar.' ' 

Mrs.  Brown  said  it. 

"Oh,  you've  got  to  do  it  with  more  spirit  than 
that!  Say  it  this  way,"  he  ordered  in  a  dicta 
torial  tone. 

Mrs.  Brown  tried  it  again. 

"That's  better,  now  say  it  over  once  more." 

She  repeated  it,  this  time  with  emphasis  and 
spirit. 

"That  will  do.  Now  say  these  things  after 
me:  'The  burglar  idea  is  an  error;  I  banish  error 
from  my  mind.  I  banish  fear  from  my  mind; 
I  have  no  fear.  I  am  mistress  of  my  own  mind.' ' 

Mrs.  Clara  G.  Brown,  with  the  candle  drip 
ping  wax  puddles  in  the  lap  of  her  next-best, 
black-silk  skirt,  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  one  eye 
of  the  burglar  she  had  made,  repeated  these 
phrases  after  him  in  a  firm,  vigorous  voice. 

"Now,"  said  Carking  Care,  "remember!  For 
ten  days,  three  hours  a  day,  you  must  repeat 
these  words,  and  you'd  better  take  an  extra 
treatment  every  other  day  for  the  pistol.  If  you 
are  resolute,  you  will  entirely  disembody  me  by 
that  time;  and  you  bet  I  shall  be  glad  enough 
to  be  out  of  it;  I  hate  a  botch,  and  I  shouldn't 
be  proud  of  my  mind's  work,  if  I  were  you.  You 
made  a  perfectly  ridiculous  mess  of  me," 

Mrs.  Brown  dropped  the  valance  and  hid  her 
burglar  from  sight,  then  carefully  shutting  the 


44          THE    UNDOING    OF    THE    BURGLAR 

door,  she  went  into  another  room  to  sleep,  all 
the  while  repeating:  "  I  have  no  fear,  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  burglar." 

At  the  end  of  ten  days  she  believed  him  to  be 
disseminated,  but  she  didn't  dare  look  under 
the  bed.  She  was  thin.  She  had  lost  ten 
pounds.  She  packed  her  trunk  and  folded  her 
best  black  silk  to  the  formula:  "'There  is  no 
such ,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

Even  at  the  moment  of  departure  she  didn't 
dare  to  tell  the  maid  to  put  the  stick  over  the 
hall  window.  "Who  knows  what  I  might 
nucleate  if  I  should  say  anything!"  she  reflected. 
She  even  stopped  herself  when  she  thought  that 
she  was  going  to  think  of  the  fear  thought. 

She  reached  Detroit  at  ten  o'clock  in  the 
evening;  and  after  a  night's  rest  she  felt  more 
like  herself  again. 

At  the  breakfast  table  a  telegram  was  handed 
to  her.  She  opened  it  carelessly,  but  read  with 
amazement:  "Last  night  a  burglar  broke  into 
your  house  by  the  hall  window  and  stole  every 
thing  he  could  carry  off." 

Poor  Clara  G.  Brown  says  she  hasn't  yet  de 
cided  what  to  do.  In  view  of  all  the  facts  it 
does  not  seem  to  be  of  any  use  to  repeat  the 
formula  against  burglars,  because  she  feels  per 
fectly  sure  that  the  thing  under  her  bed  wasn't 
the  one  who  afterward  came  in  by  the  window. 
She  even  wonders  if  they  looked  at  all  alike. 


SABRINY,  DAD  &  CO. 

PART   ONE 

YES,  that's  right  so  fur  as  it  goes;  out  of 
wood  it  is,  but  the  burnin'  question 
is,  what  kind  o'  wood.  You  see,  little 
gal,  there's  wood  and  wood.  And  so  now, 
ef  it  is  agreeable  to  my  pardner,  we'll  just 
knock  off  work  fur  a  spell  and  have  a  business 
meetin'  to  consider  what  kind  o'  wood  is  most 
suitablest,  all  things  considerin',  fur  this  'ere 
chist. 

"I'll  jest  sort  o'  stiddy  my  head  with  a  dror 
at  my  pipe  while  I  set  the  question  fairly  before 
ye. 

"Now,  speakin'  o'  woods,  there's  gopher  wood, 
that's  a  kind  o'  scripter  wood  and  no  mistake; 
but  we  don't  seem  to  have  no  great  supply  of 
that  particular  kind  o'  timber  on  hand,  not  jest 
at  present,  that  is.  Therefore  we'll  pass  on  to 
cedar  of  Lebanon;  that's  scripter  wood,  too,  and 
it  always  sounded  to  me,  Sabriny,  as  ef  cedar 
of  Lebanon  would  hev  a  sweet  sort  of  smell  to 
it,  like  spice;  now  gopher  wood,  as  I  study  on  it, 
don't  seem  as  ef  it  would  hev  no  sweet  smell, 

45 


46  SABRINY,   DAD    &   CO. 

but  it  would  hev  a  nice  dark  colour  to  it.  I 
should  ev  preferred,  myself,  to  hev  had  cedar  o' 
Lebanon  on  account  o'  the  sweet  smell,  but  it  so 
happens  thet  we  ain't  got  no  supply  o'  that  on 
hand  neither — we're  jest  about  out  o'  that  kind, 
leastwise  there  ain't  enough  to  make  a  chist  out 
of.  Can  my  pardner  think  of  any  other  sort  of 
wood  that  would  be  suitable  fur  the  work  we 
hev  in  hand?" 

"Dad,  how  would  pine  do?" 
"Shucks!  Why,  pine,  of  course,  the  very 
thing  for  this  chist;  and  it  happens  that  we  hev 
got  some  pine,  jest  as  dry  as  bone  and  exactly 
the  right  length.  Now  jest  see  the  advantage 
of  hevm'  a  pardner!" 

"Shouldn't  you  have  thought  of  pine,  Dad?" 
"I  might,  and  then  again  I  mightn't.  Of 
course  I  should  hev  come  to  it  in  time,  but 
beginnin*  way  back  in  the  Bible  fur  the  different 
kinds  of  wood  it  stands  to  reason  thet  I  shouldn't 
hev  got  round  to  pine  till  we'd  wasted  lots  of 
time  on  the  road.  And  now  here  we  be,  jest 
by  one  word  spoke  by  my  pardner.  We've 
got  some  pine  fur  sure,  and  betwixt  ourselves 
and  the  Co.  it's  pine  or  nothin'  this  time.  Shall 
we  call  it  pine?" 

"Let's  make  it  of  pine  this  time." 
"Pine  it  is  then,  and  now,  Sabriny,  you  know 
that  this  chist  is  to  be  the  best  chist  that  ever 
was  made.     No  king  couldn't  hev  no  better 


SABRINY,   DAD    &   CO.  47 

chist  than  this  one  that  we're  makin'  at  this 
very  minute  as  ever  was." 

"Couldn't  a  king  have  a  gold  chist,  Dad?" 
"Cert'in,  cert' in  he  could,  ef  he  hed  a  min'  to; 
but  the  question  ist  would  he  like  it,  all  things 
considered.  Now  on  a  cold  mornin'  in  March  or 
mebby  in  January,  with  the  snow  a-squeakin' 
under  foot,  would  he  like  to  git  up  early  in  the 
mornin'  and  leave  his  warm  bed,  to  open  the 
chist  to  git  a  plane  or  a  dror-shave  out,  so  as  to 
ease  up  the  queen's  door  ef  it  had  happened  to 
hev  sagged  a  mite  so's  't  it  wouldn't  stay  shet? 
Would  he  like  to  lay  a-holt  on  a  freezin'  cold 
gold  chist  and  mebby  hev  to  fumble  round  to 
git  the  key  into  the  lock  till  his  ringers  got  so 
numb  thet  he  couldn't  git  the  chist  open,  let 
alone  handlin'  the  dror-shave?  No,  even  a 
king  would  git  riled  at  thet,  I  do  believe.  I 
kind  o'  think,  all  things  considered,  thet  a  pine 
chist  is  the  best,  even  fur  a  king. 

"So  here  goes !  You  best  jest  squint  your  eye 
along  this  'ere  piece  of  pine,  pardner,  to  see  ef  it 
is  a  good  piece  for  a  starter." 

"I  think  it  is  a  splendid  piece,  Dad." 
"All  right  then,  now!    One  to  begin,  two  to 
show,  three  to  make  ready,  and  four  to  go.     I 
believe  this  day    was  jest  made  for  Sabriny, 
Dad  and  Co.,  the  rain  sort  of  shets  us  in  and 
shets  other  folks  out." 
"Ma,  for  instance?" 


48  SABRINY,    DAD    &    CO. 

"Now,  Sabriny,  it  isn't  fur  me  to  say  I  meant 
Ma,  but  it  cert'inly  is  considerable  damp  fur 
her  to  come  out  here  to  the  shop.  Now  I  don't 
say  she  won't  come,  and  I  ain't  sayin'  that 
Sabriny,  Dad  and  Co.,  don't  want  her  to  come; 
what  I  do  say  is,  thet  this  'ere  rain  is  goin*  to 
do  the  crops  considerable  good,  and  I'm  not 
sayin'  but  what  I  am  willin'  to  see  it  keep  on 
a-rainin'  this  way  all  day  long." 

"Oh!  Dad,  what  beautiful  curls  you  are 
makin',  I  wisht  my  hair  curled  like  them 
shavin's,  all  round  my  head." 

"Sho,  Sabriny!  I  don't  wish  no  sech  a  thing. 
I  don't  believe  I  could  work  with  no  sech  a 
curly-headed  pardner  round  the  shop,  nohow. 
It  would  upset  me  dreadful.  You  see,  when  I 
selected  a  pardner  it  was  as  much  as  anything 
else  because  she  hadn't  no  curls  flyin'  round 
loose  and  gittin'  mixed  up  with  the  shavin's. 
You  hev  to  be  mighty  sober  and  particular  to 
be  a  pardner  in  a  firm  like  ourn!" 

"Dad,  how  do  you  stick  the  corners  of  the 
chest  together?" 

"We  don't  exactly  stick  'em  together,  we 
jines  'em,  and  what  Sabriny,  Dad  and  Co.  jines 
together  no  man  can  put  asunder;  they'll  be 
jined  as  firm  as  them  that  enters  holy  matri 
mony.  It's  cling  or  bust,  and  you  can't  bust." 

"What  can't  bust,  Dad?" 

"The  corners  of  the  chist,  to  be  sure.     As  I 


SABRINY,    DAD    &   CO.  49 

was  sayin',  a  chist  is  mighty  like  holy  matri 
mony.  It  may  be  chuck  full  of  edged  tools, 
but  it  won't  separate,  not  ef  it's  made  by  one  of 
these  three — Sabriny,  Dad  and  Co.  Well,  I 
declare!  Ef  I  ain't  jest  about  got  these  'ere 
pieces  ready  to  jine." 

"I  thought  a  chist  was  a  square  box,  Dad. 
What  makes  you  make  it  that  shape,  bigger 
at  the  top?" 

"This  'ere  chist  is  peculiar,  it's  an  invention 
of  your  ole  Dad's.  You  jest  watch,  now,  and 
see  him  cut  out  these  'ere  two  little  half-moons. 
Look  out,  Sabriny!  Don't  never  tech  a  dror- 
shave;  thet  tool's  sharper  than  all  creation. 
Don't  you  never  play  with  edged  tools.  As  the 
Bible  says,  use  'em  but  don't  never  play  with 
'em.  I  swan  to  man,  ef  thet  ain't  the  dinner  bell 
a'ready  and  Ma  hollerin'  fur  Sabriny!  I  cal 
culate  somebody'll  hev  to  go  in  purty  quick  so's 
to  pacify  Ma.  I  guess  it  hed  better  be  me,  be 
cause  it  stands  to  reason  thet  ef  it  is  too  rainy 
fur  Ma  to  come  out  here,  it  is  too  rainy  fur 
Sabriny  to  go  in,  to  say  nothin'  at  all  about  her 
ever  gittin'  out  again.  So  ef  the  heft  of  the  firm 
will  stay  right  out  here  in  the  shop,  and  mebby 
jest  curl  down  with  her  doll  on  them  shavin's 
her  Dad'll  fetch  her  out  a  piece  o'  pie  or  sumthin* 
or  other;  that  is,  ef  Ma's  willin'.  Mind,  he  don't 
promise  nothin'  fur  cert'in,  only  jest  mebby." 


5O  SABRINY,    DAD    &    CO. 

"Walr  I  do  declare  for't,  ef  she  ain't  jest  fell 
fast  asleep  with  them  'ere  shavin's  pinned  to 
her  head  fur  curls!  What  cur'us  things  little 
gals  is,  anyway;  I  'most  wish  they  wouldn't 
never  grow  up.  I  guess  I'll  hev  to  flax  round 
and  git  that  peculiar  chist  of  ourn  done  afore 
she  wakes  up.  I  do  reely  suppose  I'd  orter 
hev  set  thet  light  o'  glass  into  the  butt'ry  winder 
by  all  rights,  and  mebby  it  would  ev  been  peace- 
fuller  all  'round  ef  I  hed  a-done  it.  But  this  'ere 
chist  has  got  holt  on  me  and  I  guess  I'll  jest  let 
the  butt'ry  winder  and  Ma  slide  fur  onct.  As 
we  useter  say  when  we  was  children,  'Scoldin' 
don't  hurt  none,  lickin'  don't  last  long,  and  kill 
me  she  dasn't!' 

"Awake,  are  you,  little  gal?  Well,  there's 
your  pie;  you  jest  eat  it  like  a  nice  little  gal  and 
then  come  over  here  and  see  the  chist.  It's 
'most  finished  a'ready.  There!" 

"Why,  Dad!  It's  a  cradle;  it's  a  doll's 
cradle!" 

"  Land  o'  Goshen !  so  it  is,  it's  jest  an  ordinary 
doll's  cradle,  rockers  and  all!  Who'd  'a*  thought 
it!  And  here  your  old  Dad's  been  figgerin'  on 
its  turnin'  out  to  be  a  tool  chist,  all  the  time  he's 
been  a-tinkerin'  on  it.  That's  a  good  one  on 
the  ole  man,  and  the  very  first  day,  too,  thet 
he's  worked  fur  Sabnny,  Dad  and  Co.  Keerless 
ole  Dad!" 


SABRINY,   DAD    &   CO.  5! 


PART  TWO 

More  particularly  about  the  Co. 

"Wai,  I  do  declare!  Ef  that  don't  take  me 
back  ten  years  an'  more,  to  see  you,  Sabriny, 
a-settin'  there  on  the  end  of  that  'ere  bench,  fur 
all  the  world  jest  as  you  did  that  rainy  day  when 
your  old  Dad  made  that  peculiar  chist  that 
turned  out  to  be  a  cradle,  jest  an  ordinary  doll's 
cradle.  Seems  to  me  that  you're  too  fine  to  be 
a-settin'  on  the  bench  with  all  them  folderols 
a-bubblin'  and  a-bilin'  over  the  end  o*  the  bench 
fur  all  the  world  like  geese's  feathers  a-comin' 
out  of  a  piller-slip.  Come  to  look  at  ye,  ye 
be,  and  again  ye  ben't,  the  same  little  gal  that 
wore  the  checkered  apron;  but  you've  got  the 
same  eyes,  Sabriny,  jest  the  same  eyes  the  little 
gal  had,  that  Dad  made  the  cradle  for." 

"This  is  my  graduating  dress,  Dad.  You'll 
come  over  to  the  Academy  and  see  me  graduate, 
won't  you,  Dad?" 

"Wai,  I  dunno.  You  look  as  pretty  as  a 
clove  pink,  but  I  dunno  as  I  want  to  see  a  hull 
garding  full  o'  pinks!  I  guess  jest  one  pink  is 
enough  fur  Dad." 

"Dad,  what  is  that  you're  making?" 

"Not  a  tool  chist  this  time;  it's  only  a  hen 
coop  fur  the  old  speckle.  The  tarnation  ole 
thing  has  gone  and  stole  her  nest  ag'in,  and  come 


£2  SABRINY,    DAD    &    CO. 

out  unbeknownst  to  me  with  a  hull  brood  of 
little  chicks,  and  now  she's  a-tuin'  round,  oneasy 
like,  coz  there  ain't  no  coop  waitin'  handy  for 
her  to  move  into.  As  ef  coops  came  by  nature 
as  chicks  do!" 

"I  wish  it  was  a  chest  that  you  were  making, 
Dad,  and  that  it  was  wider  at  the  top,  and  that 
when  it  was  done  itwould  turn  out  to  be  a  coffin." 

"A  coffin!  Why,  Sabriny!  You  mean  a 
cradle,  don't  ye?" 

"No,  Dad,  not  a  cradle.  I  ain't  a  child  any 
more,  I  wish  it  was  a  coffin." 

"Sho!  A  coffin?  What  a  notion  that  is,  to 
be  sure,  to  git  into  Sabriny's  head  unbidden,  as 
it  were.  Why!  You  don't  need  no  coffin  no 
more  than  nothin'  at  all.  You  ain't  a-goin'  to 
be  dead,  and  ef  you  was  you  wouldn't  take  no 
kind  of  comfort  in  it!  What  folks  reely  enjoy 
about  bein'  dead  is  thinkin'  about  it.  When  it 
comes  to  the  real  thing,  as  I  rigger  on  it,  it  'ud 
be  an  empty  sort  of  privilege.  Wishin'  they 
was  dead  is  the  very  breath  of  life  to  some  folks." 

"/  do,  Dad,  I  wish  that  I  was  dead.  I'm 
sick  and  tired  of  living  and  everything  else." 

"Now  that  seems  cur'us  to  your  dad,  you  jest 
a-graduatin'  and  mebby  with  a  prospect  of  a 
school  of  your  own  some  time,  and  now  you're 
a-wishin'  you  was  dead.  Why,  Sabriny,  when 
you  was  a  little  gal  you  was  always  a-wishin' 
that  you  hed  curls,  and  nothin'  would  do  but 


SABRINY,    DAD    &    CO.  53 

you  must  pin  shavin's  onto  your  head  and  per- 
tend  that  they  was  curls;  you  fell  asleep  onct 
with  them  shavin'  curls  pinned  on.  And  then 
you  wanted  a  cradle,  and  I  made  that  fur  you, 
and  now  you  think  that  you  want  a  coffin.  Dear 
me  suz,  wantin'  a  coffin !  Now  you  jest  tell  your 
ole  good-fur-nothin'  Dad  all  about  it — don't 
cry.  Sabriny,  I  wouldn't  cry  ef  I  was  you,  I 
mean  cry  away  ef  it  eases  you  any,  it  won't  hurt 
nothin'.  And  here's  my  bandanner,  the  one 
you  giv  me  at  Christmas,  that  time  you  earned 
the  money  pickin'  berries  and  saved  it  up  fur 
the  handkerchief.  Here,  you  just  tuck  it  under 
your  chin  so  as  not  to  spile  them  fine  close. 
There!  I  ain't  a-lookin'  at  ye,  cry  away!  I've 
locked  the  door  so's't  the  folks  can't  come  in. 
And  mebby  bimeby  you  kin  tell  it  all  to  Sabriny, 
Dad  and  Co.,  confidential  like,  and  p'raps  you'll 
find  that  you  don't  need  no  coffin  after  all,  only 
jest  Dad's  ole  ear. 

"Sabriny,  did  you  ever  think  how  many 
folks  there  is  a-livin'  on  this  earth  this  very 
minute?  And  I  guess  ef  the  hull  truth  was 
known  most  every  one  on  'em  that  drors  the 
breath  of  life  drors  in  some  sorror  with  it.  They 
jest  hev  to  grapple  with  it,  unbeknownst  to 
everyone  else;  and  mebby  the  next  one  right 
alongside  of  'em  don't  never  know  nothin'  about 
it.  Is  it  your  studies  that  bothers  you,  Sabriny? 
Algebry,  mebby?" 


54  SABRINY,    DAD    &    CO. 

"Not  altogether  algebra,  Dad;  you  see,  Dad, 
when  the  new  teacher  came  last  fall  he  took  a 
great  interest  in  my  studying  algebra.  He  said 
I  had  a  good  mind,  and  as  there  wasn't  anybody 
else  to  go  into  advanced  mathematics  he  made 
a  class  just  for  me,  and  I  have  done  splendid 
work,  he  says  so  himself." 

"Sho,  you  don't  say  so!    Wai?" 

"And  then  last  term  Squire  Jones's  daughter 
she  took  a  notion  to  study  French — French  of 
all  things — and  she  don't  know  how  to  speak 
English  hardly.  And  then  he  went  and  made 
a  class  in  French,  just  for  her,  and  she  calls  her 
self  a  'special'  and  comes  teetering  in  at  eleven 
o'clock,  and  has  a  half-hour  lesson  all  by  her 
self " 

"Now  go  slow,  Sabriny,  you  jest  go  slow  so's't 
I  kin  follow.  She  comes  in  and  I  s'pose  that  she 
gits  so  much  French  mebby  that  it  kinder  inter 
feres  with  your  gittin*  enough  algebry;  there 
ain't  enough  left  over  for  you,  so  to  speak." 

"No,  Dad,  of  course  that  isn't  it.  Of  course 
I  can  learn  all  I  have  a  mind  to,  though  he  did 
change  my  hour  just  to  suit  her." 

"Then  mebby — now  mind  I'm  only  s'posin'- 
mebby  there  ain't  quite  enough  teacher  to  go 
round  fur  both  on  ye;  is  that  it?" 

"Oh,  Dad!  how  can  he  like  that  silly  little 
thing,  she  giggles  all  the  time  and  her  hair  is 
frizzled  all  over  her  head  till  it  looks  like  a 


SABRINY,   DAD    &    CO.  55 

hurrah's  nest,  and  she  sits  and  gets  red  like  a 
baby  when  he  speaks  to  her.  I  declare  it  makes 
me  fairly  mad  to  see  the  way  she  goes  on;  and 

now  he's  going  away  and — and 

"Sh-sh-sh.  There,  don't  cry — onlyjest  enough 
to  make  you  comfortable.  I've  got  a  cold  in 
the  head,  myself,  it  bothers  me  dreadful  when 
I  go  to  speak!  And  now,  Sabriny,  I  want  to 
tell  you  somethin',  it's  a  little  story  about  your 
Aunt  Lize.  She's  a  pretty  comfortable  old 
body  now,  like  your  Dad;  but  when  she  was 
about  eighteen — why,  you're  jest  eighteen,  too, 
Sabriny,  that  is  you'll  be  eighteen  come  June. 
Now  don't  things  come  round  sort  o'  cur'us! — 
wal,  when  your  Aunt  Lize  was  jest  eighteen  a 
new  teacher  he  come  to  town.  He  was  a  spry 
young  feller,  and  he  was  only  teachin'  till  he 
got  a  call  to  preach.  There  was  a  sort  of  re 
vival  of  religion  in  our  town  when  it  was  found 
out  how  this  young  man  attended  all  the  meet- 
in's,  among  the  young  folks  especially.  Lize 
she  took  to  goin'  to  all  the  meetin's  jest  like  all 
the  other  girls,  and  the  young  feller,  that  is  the 
teacher,  he  used  more  often  than  not  to  see  her 
home  with  another  girl  that  lived  up  her  way. 
Your  Aunt  Lize  had  always  been  dreadful  easy- 
tempered  up  to  this  time,  jest  like  a  lamb  to 
live  with;  you  wouldn't  ever  have  supposed 
that  she  and  your  Ma  were  of  the  same  family, 
not  of  course  but  what  your  Ma's  temper  is  all 


56  SABRINY,    DAD    &    CO. 

right,  only  it  isn't  jest  the  same  kind  as  your 
Aunt  Lize's.  But  now  all  of  a  sudden  Lize 
turned  sort  of  snappish,  and  she  cried  dretful 
easy  ef  anything  crossed  her,  and  she  seemed 
to  have  a  tumble  time  with  her  religion,  till  it 
almost  seemed  as  ef  there  wa'n't  no  living  with 
her,  and  then  all  at  once  she  cleared  up  like  a 
May  mornin';  and  bimeby  it  come  out  that  she 
was  goin'  to  marry  the  preacher,  and  so  her 
troubles  ended.  I  don't  know  'zactly  what  all 
this  has  to  do  with  yourn  about  your  algebry, 
only  it  sort  of  popped  into  your  old  Dad's  head; 
and  now  I  guess  you  hed  orter  be  a  goin'  over 
to  the  Academy.  I  thought  I  seen  the  teacher 
and  a  lot  of  folks  a-goin'  by,  some  time  ago." 

"Here's  your  bandanna,  Dad.  It  ain't  so 
very  wet,  but  I'll  hang  it  on  this  peg  to  dry,  and 
I  want  you  to  know,  Dad,  that  there  ain't  a  hu 
man  being  in  the  wide  world  that  I  care  a  snap 
for,  no  not  one  snap — except  just  you." 

"  I  guessed  it  all  the  time,  Sabriny,  I  guessed  it 
from  the  start.  And  now  run  along,  and  don't 
you  never  go  and  care  fur  no  one  else,  so  long 

as  you've  got  your  ole  Dad." 

******* 

"Dad,  has  Ma  gone  to  bed?" 
"No,  she's  jest  down  suller  for  yeast." 
"Come  out  here,  Dad,  just  a  minute,  just 
one  minute.     Oh,  Dad,  I'm  so  happy." 
"Not  wantin'  no  coffin  mebby." 


SABRINY,    DAD    &    CO.  57 

"Not  wanting  any  coffin  or  anything — hes 
waiting  out  at  the  gate,  I've  told  him  all  about 
Sabriny,  Dad  and  Co.,  and  what  do  you  think? 
He  wants  to  be  the  Co." 

"Sho!  Who'd 'a' thought  it.  Wai,  run  along, 
Sabriny,  I  hear  Ma  on  the  stairs." 

"Curls  and  shavin's,  and  chists  and  cradles, 
and  coffins  and  lovers;  and  mebby,  bimeby, 
cradles  and  coffins  ag'in.  And  then  old  Dad, 
he'll  step  out  and  t'will  be  jest  Sabriny  and  Co. 
Useless  old  Dad!" 


A  DROVE  OF  FACTS 

AND 

A  FLOCK  OF  FANCIES 

HE  STARTED  out  early  in  the  morning, 
even  before  sunrise,  for  he  had  a  drove 
of  Facts  and  a  flock  of  Fancies  to  take 
to  market. 

Every  Fact  was  the  best  of  its  kind,  A.I 
Registered.  Every  Fact  stood  on  three  legs 
as  facts  must  do  in  order  to  be  stable  and  yet 
adjustable  to  uneven  foundations;  a  four-legged 
fact  would  teeter,  just  as  a  four-legged  milking- 
stool  rocks  on  an  uneven  barn  floor. 

These  Facts  were  of  a  monotonous,  dull  gray 
colour,  with  thick  hides  and  a  few  bristles.  They 
were  of  a  sort  of  square  shape,  but  inclined  to 
elongate  when  they  moved. 

It  was  a  handsome  drove,  and  represented  a 
good  sum  of  money. 

The  man  had  also  a  flock  of  Fancies  for  sale; 
these  he  had  carefully  crated  for  easier  transpor 
tation,  for  they  had  wings,  and  were  restless,  and 
also  a  little  wild  and  uncertain  to  handle.  The 
crate  was  made  of  woven  osiers,  delightfully 

59 


6O  A    DROVE    OF    FACTS 

braided  and  interlaced  with  the  bark  still  show 
ing  green  and  bronze-brown. 

The  Fancies  were  something  like  birds,  but 
also  somewhat  like  butterflies.  In  colour  they 
were  an  idealized  rainbow,  modified  with  grays 
and  whites  with  now  and  then  ebony  splashes 
for  distinguishment. 

The  Facts  plodded  along  steadily  on  their 
three  legs,  giving  him  no  trouble  at  all,  and  no 
delight.  But  they  would  bring  him  much  gold 
in  the  market  place. 

The  Fancies,  on  the  contrary,  kept  him  busy; 
they  fluttered  with  anger  at  their  prison  bars 
and  shed  bits  of  iridescent  down  that  came  float 
ing  out  through  the  loosely  woven  osiers,  as  if 
rainbows  were  shedding  feathers. 

They  twittered  and  made  plaintive  broken 
trills  while  they  pecked  at  their  bars. 

Suddenly  at  a  sharp  turn  in  the  road  the 
crate  tipped  over  and  both  sides  gave  way,  and 
out  flew  the  whole  flock. 

Such  a  burst  of  Fancies  never  before  was  seen, 
and  he,  in  despair,  threw  his  arms  up  toward 
the  sky  and  cried  aloud,  "Oh,  ye  Gods  of 
Greece!" 

Now  never  before  in  all  his  life  had  he  called 
on  the  Greek  Gods  for  aid,  and  presumably  they 
were  as  surprised  as  he  himself  was,  but  they 
came  to  his  aid. 

His  Fancies  circled  widely  around  his  head 


AND   A    FLOCK   OF    FANCIES  6l 

with  soft  pipings,  they  lit  on  his  shoulders  and 
on  his  hands;  they  flew  wide  winged  over  the 
hedges  into  the  fields,  then  up  into  the  blue 
sky;  and  always  going  or  coming  they  lit  upon 
the  backs  of  the  plodding  Facts  and  gave  deri 
sive  little  nips  and  pecks  at  them. 

"I  shall  never  lose  those  Fancies  of  mine," 
said  the  man,  reassured;  "I  couldn't  lose  them 
if  I  would,  and  by  the  Gods  I  would  not!  They 
shall  be  free." 

Strange,  but  he  was  swearing  again  by  his 
new-found  Gods,  not  even  noticing  that  he  was 
doing  so.  He  was  amazingly  happy. 

When  he  arrived  at  the  market  place  with  his 
drove  of  pedigreed  Facts  and  his  flock  of  Fancies 
he  was  the  sensation  of  the  moment.  The  crowd 
gathered  round  him  with  shouts  of  admiration. 

He  cunningly  thought  to  himself,  I  will  sell 
my  Fancies  first,  the  Facts  will  sell  later,  they 
always  sell. 

So  he  offered  his  Fancies  in  rhyme  and  song, 
he  sang  of  their  delectable  companionship  while 
they  perched  on  his  cap  and  on  his  outstretched 
arm  and  hand. 

The  crowd  laughed  but  soon  turned  away; 
they  were  not  here  at  the  market  place  to  buy 
Fancies. 

One  little  girl  only  came  to  him  and  said: 
"Please,  sir,  will  you  sell  me  one  little  Fancy 
for  a  penny?" 


62  A    DROVE    OF    FACTS 

"Indeed  I  will,"  said  he,  and  he  held  out  to 
her  a  plump  little  winged  fellow  with  azure 
coat  and  violet  wings;  but  before  he  gave  it 
into  her  hands  he  said,  "Here  is  my  sweetest 
Fancy.  What  will  you  do  with  it?" 

"Please,  sir,"  said  she,  "I  will  take  it  home, 
and  my  mother  will  cook  it  for  supper." 

He  cast  the  bird  into  the  high  air  and  cried 
aloud,  "Oh,  ye  dear  Gods  of  Greece,  protect 
these  radiant  Fancies — and  me." 

This  prayer  greatly  shocked  the  public,  but 
it  did  not  prevent  them  from  buying  all  the 
Facts,  which  they  got  at  amazingly  low  prices, 
for  the  man  seemed  indifferent  to  their  value 
and  in  a  hurry  to  be  off. 

It  was,  however,  a  very  goodly  sum  of  money 
that  he  carried  with  him  in  a  leathern  purse 
tied  to  his  belt. 

He  was  walking  homeward  slowly  and  reluct 
antly  when  he  suddenly  stopped  and  put  his 
hand  to  his  head  and  gave  a  cry  of  regret. 
From  his  pocket  he  drew  a  small  bit  of  purple 
woollen  cloth;  a  scrap  of  paper  was  pinned  on 
it,  with  these  words  written  on  it: — "Match 
this  sample  of  my  dress  with  cotton  thread,  and 
also  buy  one  yard  and  seven  eighths  of  purple 
ribbon  to  match  it — it  must  be  just  one  inch 
wide  with  a  corded  edge.  Don't  forget!" 

He  had  forgotten.  He  looked  down  at  his 
feet,  and  there  stood  a  new  little  square  Fact 


AND    A    FLOCK   OF    FANCIES  63 

looking  stupidly  at  him.  He  gazed  at  it  un- 
comprehendingly;  at  first  he  thought  it  must  be 
one  of  his  old  Facts  that  had  followed  him  home 
from  market;  then,  suddenly,  it  dawned  upon 
him  that  here  was  a  brand-new  Fact,  the  fore 
runner  probably  of  a  lot  of  new  Facts  that  would 
be  turning  up,  day  after  day,  and  have  to  be 
fed  and  marketed  next  year,  and  then  more  new 
Facts,  year  after  year.  No  end  of  the  square, 
uninteresting,  everlasting  Facts! 

He  stooped,  and  taking  off  the  leather  bag 
he  tied  it  with  a  thong  around  the  neck  of  the 
new  Fact;  then  he  wrote  on  the  back  of  the  scrap 
of  paper  that  had  been  pinned  to  the  purple 
worsted  sample  these  words,  "  I  am  sorry,  but  I 
forgot  the  thread  and  the  ribbon."  He  pinned 
this,  together  with  the  sample,  on  to  the  leather 
bag,  then  gave  a  little  shove  to  the  new  Fact 
and  said  to  it,  "Now  go  home."  And  the  Fact 
started  off  on  his  three-legged  trot. 

The  man  looked  after  him  and  smiled,  then 
he  sat  down  on  a  bank  of  green  grass  and  all  the 
Fancies  flew  to  him  and  hovering  over  him  wove 
a  garment  with  their  wings  that  hid  him  from 
sight  in  a  flurry  of  iridescence. 

That  evening  at  sundown  the  wife  went  to 
the  gate  to  watch  for  him.  She  could  not  see 
him,  but  out  of  the  dust-bow  made  by  the  rays 
of  the  setting  sun  she  saw  a  little  Fact  emerge. 
He  came  to  her  and  she  undid  the  leather  bag, 


64  A    DROVE    OF    FACTS 

full  of  gold,  and  she  gave  a  cluck  of  happy  greed 
like  a  satisfied  hen.  Then  she  saw  the  writing 
on  the  paper,  and  read,  "  I  am  sorry  but  I  forgot 
the  thread  and  the  ribbon." 

"Sorry  he   forgot,  is  he?     Well,   he'd  better 
be — and  good  riddance  to  him,  7  say!" 


A  CHIP  OF  THE  OLD  BLOCK 

ONE  scene,  one  act. 
Scene  in  a  cobbler's  shop.  Leather 
hangs  on  the  wall.  A  pile  of  old  shoes 
to  be  mended  lies  on  floor  or  bench.  An  old 
stove  in  the  corner.  A  cobbler's  bench,  some 
straight-backed,  splint-bottomed  chairs,  and 
any  other  properties  of  a  cobbler's  shop.  The 
cobbler  wears  a  leather  apron,  flannel  shirt 
with  suspenders.  He  has  heavy,  gray,  over 
hanging  eyebrows,  hair  standing  up  straight, 
and  a  wrinkled,  strong  face.  He  looks  like  a 
weather-beaten  old  bird  of  prey.  He  is  pegging 
on  a  boot,  keeps  at  work  most  of  the  time,  and 
talks  with  tools  in  hand.  He  changes  the 
hammer  and  pegs  for  an  awl  and  waxed  thread 
after  the  first  few  sentences. 

The  tramp  opens  the  door  cautiously,  sticks 
his  head  in,  looks  around,  then  comes  in  and 
half  closes  the  door.  He  is  untidy,  slouching, 
half  humble  and  half  blustering.  His  first 
manner  is  beseeching. 

TRAMP:     Father,  I've  come  home. 

[Cobbler  looks  the  tramp  over  but  makes  no 
answer  and  returns  to  his  'pegging.] 
6s 


66  A    CHIP    OF    THE    OLD    BLOCK 

TRAMP:  Father,  don't  you  know  me?  Don't: 
you  know  your  son  Ben  that  ran  away  from 
home  so  many  years  ago?  I  am  Ben.  I've 
learnt  a  lot  sence  then  and  I  am  sorry  for  what 
I  did;  I've  come  home  to  stay  with  you  and  to 
help  you  in  your  old  age;  you  are  gittin'  too  old 
to  live  alone  and  work  so  hard.  I  am  goin'  to 
stay  right  here  and  help. 

[The  cobbler  looks  for  a  tool  at  his  side  then 
slowly  waxes  his  thread  before  he  an 
swers,  then  he  says  slowly  and  with 
emphasis.} 

COBBLER:  No,  you  ain't  come  home,  and  you 
ain't  come  home  to  stay,  nuther. 

TRAMP  [whining]:  Don't  you  know  your 
own  son,  father?  Don't  you  know  Benny? 
Don't  you  remember  how  I  ran  away  because 
you  tole  me  to  go  out  and  bring  in  a  log  of  fire 
wood  and  I  wouldn't  do  it?  Don't  you  remember 
how  you  said  you  would  lick  me  if  I  didn't 
mind,  and  I  said  I  would  run  away  and  never 
come  back,  and  you  said  "Go"  and  I  went, 
and  I  ain't  never  come  back,  till  now,  like  I  said 
I  wouldn't.  I  am  sorry  now  that  I  didn't  mind 
you.  I've  turned  over  a  new  leaf;  I  ain't  always 
been  as  good  as  I  ought  to  have  been  but  I  am 
going  to  be  good  now  and  stay  right  here  and 
comfort  you.  Ain't  you  glad  to  see  me  again? 
[The  cobbler  does  not  look  at  him  or  seem 
to  hear  him,  but  sews  at  his  work.} 


A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK  6j 

TRAMP:  Father,  I've  repented,  I  am  all 
right  now.  I'd  ought  to  have  studied  to  have 
been  a  minister  like  you  wanted  I  should,  but 
I  got  into  bad  ways  and  bad  company. 

[The  cobbler  leans  forward  and  points  to 

the  door  with  his  aw!.] 

COBBLER:  Young  feller,  you  kin  go  out 
or  stay  in  as  suits  you,  but  you  best  shut  that 
door,  it  ain't  any  too  warm  in  here,  anyway. 

[Tramp  shuts  door  but  keeps  his  hand  on 
the  latch  for  a  minute  as  if  not  certain 
whether  it  was  not  best  to  be  on  the  other 
side,  then  he  sneaks  nearer  the  cobbler.} 
TRAMP:     Father,  ain't  you  goin'  to  forgive 
your  son?     You  hadn't  ought  to  be  so  hard 
and  unforgivin'  to  any  one  that's  sorry.     The 
gospels  say— 

COBBLER  [interrupting  him  sharply}:  Quit 
that,  young  feller!  I've  been  studyin'  on  your 
case  sence  you  come  in  here  and  I'll  tell  you 
what  I'll  do  for  you.  I  notice  that  your  right 
heel  is  all  trod  down  and  wore  out,  and  if  you'll 
take  that  boot  off,  I'll  mend  it  for  you  and  I'll 
do  it  for  nothin',  too,  and  then  I'll  take  down 
that  whip  that  hangs  over  yonder  and  I'll  give 
you  the  all-firedest  lickin'  that  you  ever  got, 
and  then  you  kin  go. 

TRAMP  [getting  mad]\  You  old  brute,  you! 
You  always  was  a  hard  man,  everybody  says  so 
and  I  won't  take  off  my  boot  for  you  to  mend, 


68  A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK 

and  I'll  go  away  this  time  and  I  won't  never 
come  back  again  no  matter  how  much  you  want 
me  to  [whining}.  I  should  think  you  would 
want  to  be  kind  to  your  only  son,  you  will  be 
sorry  for  this  some  time  when  it  is  too  late  and 
I  am  gone.  Good-bye,  father.  [Hesitates  for 
a  minute  and  then  hunches  up  his  shoulders  and 
goes  partly  out,  then  turns  and  shakes  his  fist  at 
the  cobbler,  goes  out  and  leaves  the  door  open. 
The  cobbler  sits  and  shakes  his  head  slowly,  speak 
ing  to  himself.} 

COBBLER:    No  son  of  mine. 

[MR.  WOOD,  the  minister,  comes  in  im 
mediately.} 

MINISTER:  Good  morning,  Good  morning, 
Deacon  Atwood. 

COBBLER:  Mornin',  parson,  set.  [Pushes  a 
chair  toward  him.} 

MINISTER:  It's  a  cold  morning,  Deacon, 
mercury  way  down  below  at  seven  o'clock. 
This  is  the  warmest  place  I've  seen  yet,  and  it 
smells  good,  too,  in  here.  I  reckon  you've  got  in 
some  new  leather.  I  was  brought  up  on  the  smell 
of  leather.  I  declare!  it  makes  me  feel  just  as 
if  I  was  in  my  old  home;  I  love  the  smell  of 
leather,  and  have,  ever  since  I  was  a  child  in 
petticoats.  I  sometimes  think  that  I  was  cut 
out  for  a  shoemaker  instead  of  a  minister;  but 
I  didn't  go  into  the  ministry  without  thought, 
either.  At  first  I  went  in  only  because  my 


A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK  69 

father  had  wanted  me  to,  and  then  I  felt  the  call. 
Before  I  die  I  hope  to  justify  his  hopes.  I  was  a 
disappointment  to  my  father. 

COBBLER:     Is  your  father  living,  Parson? 

MINISTER  [after  a  pause  and  with  sadness^ 
slowly] :  Yes,  he  is  living. 

COBBLER:  Yes,  I  just  got  in  a  nice  lot  of 
leather,  I  callate  it  will  last  me  all  winter. 
Mebby  it  will  last  as  long  as  I  do,  till  I  am  gone 
where  there  ain't  no  shoes  to  wear  out  and  no 
need  of  leather  to  mend  'em.  I  am  gittin'  on  in 
years,  and  they  lie  heavy  on  me. 

MINISTER:  Nonsense!  You  are  the  young 
est  and  the  spryest  man  in  town. 

COBBLER  [searching  for  something  and  his 
shaking  shoulders  showing  thai  he  is  laughing]: 
I  suppose  I  be  as  spry  as  most  of  my  age,  but  I 
ain't  by  a  long  sight  so  spry  as  that  young  tramp 
was  in  gittin'  out  of  here  when  he  got  mad  cause 
he  seen  [chuckle]  that  I  was  minded  to  take  the 
whip  down.  He  wouldn't  even  wait  to  have 
his  boot  heel  mended,  and  I  offered  to  do  it  fur* 
nothin',  not  charging  a  cent  for  time  nor  for 
leather. 

[The  minister  rises  and  walks  around  the 
room  looking  interestedly  at  the  leather 
and  the  shoes,  then  he  draws  his  chair 
nearer  to  the  cobbler  as  if  he  had  de 
termined  to  talk  seriously .] 

MINISTER:     Deacon  Atwood,  what  made  you 


7O  A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK. 

offer  to  mend  that  young  tramp's  boot  for 
nothing?  He  looked  like  an  able-bodied  man, 
capable  of  work.  Rather  a  mean  face,  though! 
Did  you  know  who  he  was? 

COBBLER  [working  at  intervals  as  he  talks}'.  I 
guess  that  young  feller  didn't  know  rightly  who 
he  was  himself;  he  claimed  to  be  my  son  who 
ran  away  fifteen  years  ago  this  very  month.  I 
guess  you  know  the  story,  most  everybody  docs, 
and  you  have  been  here  five  years  [pause]. 

I  often  thought  I'd  tell  you  about  it,  cause 
your  name  is  Benjamin,  and  cause  you  have  a 
little  son  named  Benjamin  and  a  little  gal 
named  Sairy,  same  as  my  wife  was.  That 
made  me  often  think  I'd  like  to  tell  you  about  it. 
But  somehow  it  come  difficult. 

MINISTER:  And  I  have  often  wanted  to  talk 
with  you  about  it,  very  particularly,  for  some 
very  good  reasons.  I've  got  something  on  my 
mind. 

COBBLER:  That  young  feller  that  was  in 
here  had  picked  up  the  story  somewhere  in 
town  and  he  thought  to  come  it  over  me  by  pre 
tending  to  be  my  Benjamin,  but  he  didn't  take 
me  in.  I  persuaded  him  that  he  wa'n't  no  son 
of  mine  and  that  he  didn't  want  anything  at 
my  hands,  not  even  a  lickin'  [chuckles],  I  jest 
pinted  to  that  whip  that  hangs  up  there,  same 
as  it  did  when  my  son  ran  away.  When  I  look 
at  that  whip  I  don't  feel  so  old  as  I  do  when  I 


A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK  yi 

set  here  and  think  [pause].  That  whip  has 
hung  there  for  fifteen  years,  waitin'  for  the  day 
when  he  comes  home  to  bring  in  that  log  of 
fire-wood  [pause].  Did  you  say  that  you  was 
brought  up  on  the  smell  of  leather?  Mebby 
your  father  was  a  shoemaker,  too,  same  as  I  be. 

MINISTER  [with  deliberation}-.  Yes,  my  father 
was  a  shoemaker;  you  make  me  think  of  him. 

COBBLER:  And  you  make  me  think  of  what 
I  wanted  my  son  to  be,  and  you  always  have  made 
me  think  of  that  ever  sence  you  came  here  and 
was  settled  [with  a  sigh].  I  never  wanted 
anything  in  all  my  life  so  much  as  I  wanted  my 
son  to  be  a  minister  of  the  gospel  [looks  straight 
ahead  as  if  seeing  his  life  and  disappointment]. 

MINISTER:  You  are  sure  that  that  young 
fellow  that  came  in  here  wasn't  your  son? 

COBBLER:  No,  he  wa'n't  no  son  of  mine 
[goes  to  work  with  energy]. 

MINISTER:  How  can  you  be  certain  that  he 
was  not  your  son  ?  I  have  known  the  story  of 
your  son  ever  since  I  came  here,  yes,  and  before 
that,  too;  I  have  always  believed  that  he  would 
come  back.  I  hope  that  when  he  does  you  will 
have  cause  to  forgive  him.  How  do  you  know 
that  you  will  recognize  him  after  all  these  years? 
The  boy  has  become  a  man,  and  changed. 

COBBLER:  Not  know  my  son!  Not  know 
Benjamin!  I  guess  I  should  know  him  if  he 
was  to  turn  up  after  a  hundred  years.  My 


72  A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK 

Benjamin !  I  would  know  him  ef  we  met  by 
accident  on  the  street.  Why !  I  should  know  him 
ef  he  entered  town  at  midnight  and  I  was  in 
bed  and  didn't  see  him,  I'd  feel  him. 

MINISTER  [gently  but  impressively} :  He  would 
be  about  my  age;  you  wouldn't  whip  a  man  of 
my  age? 

COBBLER:  A  promise  is  a  promise,  and  when 
Ben  comes  home  he  will  get  the  licking  that  I 
promised  him,  ef  I  can  wield  the  whip.  He'll 
expect  it.  It  is  justice,  and  nothin'  short  of 
justice.  He  is  sure  to  come  home  sometime 
[pause].  I  am  sorry  that  his  mother  did  not  live 
to  see  him  again.  She  died  four  years  after 
he  ran  away;  she  believed  in  him.  She  went  so 
far  as  to  say  that  she  wouldn't  wonder  ef  he 
became  a  minister  of  the  Gospels  after  all. 
There  wa'n't  a  meal, breakfast,  dinner, or  supper, 
that  she  didn't  set  a  plate  for  him  on  the  table, 
and  she  kept  the  sheets  on  his  bed  aired  in  case 
he  came  suddenly  at  night.  She  set  by  the  fire 
and  pictured  how  he  would  come,  and  she  knit 
socks  fur  him  in  case  of  need.  She  knew  and  / 
know,  as  sure  as  there  is  a  Power  in  heaven,  that 
Benjamin  will  come  home.  It  is  borne  in  upon 
me  that  it  will  not  be  long  now  before  he  comes. 
Ben  wa'n't  all  bad,  he  had  good  blood,  but  he  was 
headstrong  at  times,  and  he  needed  chastening. 
This  'ere  feller  that  came  in  here  to-day  he  wa'n't 
no  good,  he  was  bad,  bad  all  through.  He  had 


A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK  73 

picked  up  the  story  straight  enough.  He  thought 
to  take  me  in,  me,  Ben  s  father!  He  is  the  fourth 
feller  that  has  tried  that  game,  one  feller  went 
so  fur  as  to  write  me  a  letter  askin*  me  to  send 
him  money  to  come  home  with;  he  wanted  to 
help  me,  too.  They  are  all  keen  to  help  me  in  my 
old  age.  I  didn't  answer  that  feller's  letter. 
When  Benjamin  is  ready  to  come  home  he  will 
come  straight,  he  won't  write.  It  may  take 
him  years  to  make  up  his  mind,  fur  he  is  a  chip 
of  the  old  block,  but  he  will  come  straight,  he 
ain't  no  coward.  I  shouldn't  much  wonder  ef 
he  brought  in  that  stick  of  wood  that  I  sent 
him  out  arter.  That  would  be  like  Ben — yes, 
that  would  be  like  him. 

MINISTER:  And  when  he  does  come  don't 
you  think  you  might  for  once  forget  that  in 
junction  about  the  rod,  and  trust  that  time  has 
chastened  the  boy,  that  perhaps  the  good  has 
triumphed  over  the  bad? 

COBBLER:  I  have  often  thought  about  that; 
but  a  vow  is  a  vow.  I  vowed  with  reason  that 
I  would  chastise  him.  Mebby  I  was  hasty, 
mebby  the  Lord  has  meted  out  to  both  of  us 
what  was  our  due,  but  all  the  same  I  sha'n't 
never  forget  to  have  that  whip  in  readiness 
when  he  does  come. 

MINISTER  [rising:  Deacon,  if  you  don't 
mind  I  will  go  out  and  get  a  stick  of  wood  for 
the  fire,  it  is  getting  low.  [He  goes  out  and 


74  A    CHIP    OF   THE    OLD    BLOCK 

comes  in  with  a  stick  of  wood  which  he  lays  by  the 
stove,  then  he  stands  before  the  cobbler  and  says]: 
Is  there  any  mark  by  which  you  could  know 
your  son,  Deacon  Atwood? 

COBBLER:  Why!  I  tell  you  there's  no  need. 
I'd  know  him  anywheres,  but  there  is  a  way,  and 
he  knows  it  and  /  know  it.  My  son  Ben  he 
hadn't  any  big  toe  on  his  right  foot,  he  chopped 
it  off  when  he  was  a  mite  of  a  boy  trying  to  chop 
wood.  Why!  he  wa'n't  more'n  seven  years  old, 
and  by  that  I  should  know  him  anywhere,  only 
there'd  be  no  need.  I'd  know  him  without  that, 
but  that  is  the  reason  that  I  wanted  the  tramp 
to  take  off  his  boot.  I  am  set,  but  I  hope  that 
I  am  not  bigoted. 

MINISTER:  Father,  I  have  brought  in  that 
stick  of  wood  for  the  fire,  and  now  I  will  take 
off  my  right  boot  if  you  will  mend  it  for  me. 
[The  cobbler  looks  long  and  searchingly  at  the 
minister  then  rises  and  takes  the  whip  from  the  wall 
and  places  it  in  the  minister  s  hands.} 

COBBLER:  Son,  Benjamin,  my  son,  you  have 
beat  your  old  father  this  time,  but  you  must  re 
member  that  it  was  me  that  first  led  your  feet 
into  the  paths  of  righteousness,  and  that  the 
Scripters  are  right  when  they  teach  "Spare  the 
rod  and  spile  the  child"  [he  lays  his  hands  tenderly 
on  the  minister  s  shoulders  and  says]:  I  wish 
your  mother  was  here  to-day,  mebby  she  is. 


A  STUDY  IN  HANDS 

I  WAS  riding  up  town  in  a  State  Street  car 
when  I  discovered  myself  intently  studying 
the  hands  of  the  man  who  sat  opposite  me. 
I  had  not  particularly  noticed  him  till  I  found 
that  I  was  unconsciously  interested  in  his  hands: 
they  were  crossed,  one  over  the  other,  on  the 
head  of  his  cane;  and  they  held  a  pair  of  gloves 
in  their  loose  grasp.  The  hands  were  fine  in 
form,  as  beautiful  as  some  of  the  sculptured 
hands  on  Italian  tombs.  I  had  been  getting 
pleasure  in  merely  looking  at  them,  without  in 
any  way  analyzing  the  cause  of  my  gratification; 
then  my  eyes  naturally  followed  up  the  line 
of  the  sleeve  of  the  well-fitting  spring  overcoat 
to  the  collar,  and  then  to  the  face  of  the  man. 

Above  a  certain  grade  one  overcoat  does  not 
materially  differ  from  another;  still  one  does 
see  now  and  then  an  outward  covering  which 
carries  an  essential  revelation.  This  coat  an 
nounced  quite  plainly  that  the  man  who  wore 
it  was  a  New  Yorker,  that  he  was  a  club-man 
and  incidentally  a  gentleman,  and  also  that 
leisure  was  his  absorbing  profession.  He  was 
gazing  directly  in  front.  I  was  naturally  in- 

75 


76  A    STUDY    IN    HANDS 

eluded  in  his  line  of  vision,  but  at  the  same  time 
I  was  absolutely  excluded  by  reason  of  his  entire 
unconsciousness  of  me:  not  at  all  an  assumed 
obliviousness,  but  the  outcome  of  acquired  in 
difference  to  casual  surroundings. 

"These  hands  have  done  some  momentous 
work  in  the  world,  henceforth  they  will  be 
folded:  for  better  or  worse  their  work  is  com 
pleted." 

I  heard  these  words  as  if  they  had  been 
spoken  to  me,  not  at  all  as  if  I  had  clothed  an 
idea  in  words  for  better  comprehension. 

The  hands  were,  as  I  have  said,  beautifully 
formed  and  well  kept,  but  it  was  not  on  either 
of  these  counts  that  they  held  my  attention; 
it  was  rather  because  they  seemed  to  have  at 
tained  a  distinct  individuality  apart  from  their 
possessor. 

I  could  not  explain  the  conviction  that  they 
had  done  some  definitive  work;  in  their  passiv 
ity  they  bore  a  singular  look  of  self-intelligence. 

What  had  they  done?  They  were  not  liter 
ary  hands;  no,  nor  were  they  used  to  diplomatic 
red-tape  or  ribbons;  they  had  never  carried 
the  green  baize  bag  from  office  to  court,  nor 
were  they  the  acquisitive  hands  of  the  financier; 
and  most  certainly  they  had  never  toiled  for  a 
living  in  the  realm  of  material  things. 

What  had  they  done?  Why  were  they  out 
of  the  conflict? 


A    STUDY   IN    HANDS  77 

I  was  forced  to  respect  them,  they  held  the 
secret  in  so  loose  but  significant  a  grasp. 

Then  a  vague  unrest  or  fear  infused  itself 
into  my  interest.  I  wished  that  the  man  would 
move  them,  that  I  might  see  them  in  action. 
The  wish  grew  to  be  imperative,  unbearable; 
it  was  morbid.  If  only  something  would  hap 
pen  to  lessen  the  persistent  imprint  on  my 
retina  of  the  crossed  hands! 

I  turned  and  looked  out  of  the  window.  I 
counted  the  foot-travellers  as  we  passed  them, 
I  read  the  signs  over  the  shop  windows. 

We  crossed  the  bridge ;  people  got  out  and  other 
people  got  in.  The  man  was  oblivious  to  all 
these  comings  and  goings,  and  I  found  myself 
again  studying  the  hands  crossed  over  the  tan 
gloves,  on  the  head  of  the  cane. 

The  car  stopped,  and  in  through  the  narrow 
door  flowed  a  tide  of. velvet,  silk,  and  lace,  with 
an  accompanying  whiff  of  violets.  There  was  a 
pressure  for  seats,  there  were  polite  refusals 
and  humorous  philosophies,  with  stray  shafts 
of  wit  at  Chicago's  expense  which  seemed  to 
cement  the  party  together  and  to  set  them  quite 
apart  from  the  rest  of  us. 

A  tired,  slender  girl  with  a  jaunty,  cheap  hat, 
gave  up  her  seat  to  one  of  the  youngest  of  the 
incomers.  Evidently  she  was  hypnotized  by 
the  picture  hat  and  the  bunch  of  violets  so  care 
lessly  worn  in  the  open  jacket. 


78  A    STUDY   IN   HANDS 

Little  by  little  the  first  one  of  the  party  was 
pushed  up  the  aisle  till  she  stood  almost  between 
me  and  the  man  of  the  hands.  She  had  unwill 
ingly  progressed  backward,  yielding  inch  by 
inch,  grasping  her  full  draperies  with  one  hand 
while  with  the  other  she  made  desperate,  tight- 
laced  clutches  at  the  various  straps  that  offered 
themselves  successively  to  her.  She  held  her 
dress  up  with  an  ungloved  hand,  which  was 
sufficiently  clothed  in  a  multitude  of  rings. 

She  was  redolent  of  wealth.  In  her  last 
clutch  for  a  strap  the  glove  fell  to  the  muddy 
car  floor;  she  did  not  miss  it  for  a  moment,  and 
it  lay  there  just  between  me  and  the  man  of 
the  hands. 

I  watched  him,  expecting  him  to  move;  I 
thought  that  now  the  sentient  hands  would  re 
veal  themselves,  in  the  act  of  picking  up  and  re 
turning  the  glove. 

There  was  not  a  motion  of  them,  not  even  an 
involuntary  contraction  of  the  muscles  that 
await  an  order  from  the  brain. 

He  sees,  but  does  not  advertise  his  seeing,  I 
thought. 

Then,  deliberately,  and  with  intention,  he 
raised  his  foot  and  placed  it  on  the  glove.  So 
wanton,  so  inexplicable  an  act  I  have  never 
seen;  it  was  an  atrocity,  taken  in  connection 
with  his  evident  breeding.  All  traditions  were 
outraged;  in  the  act  not  only  that  glove  but  all 


A    STUDY   IN   HANDS  79 

the  innumerable  gloves  of  romance  and  chivalry 
were  muddied  and  trampled  by  his  offending 
foot. 

I  heard  myself  give  a  protesting  gasp,  but  I  do 
not  know  whether  he  heard  or  not;  his  eyes 
were  still  set  toward  the,  to  him,  nothingness 
of  outward  human  things. 

Half  way  between  us  the  elaborated  bulk  of 
black  lace  made  up  over  a  lavender  silk  lady  was 
swaying  in  uncomfortable  apprehension,  no  seat 
seeming  available. 

Suddenly  her  eyes  fell  on  the  man  opposite 
me,  and  she  exclaimed,  "Why,  Dick!  Why, 
Cousin  Dick,  where  in  all  the  world  did  you 
come  from?  .  .  .  Oh,  dear  me,  I've  drop 
ped  one  of  my  gloves!"  And  she  agitated  her 
self  to  investigate  the  floor. 

"It's  here,  I  am  keeping  it  for  you,"  said 
Cousin  Dick.  And  he  indicated  the  glove  under 
his  foot  with  the  slightest  possible  gesture  of  his 
head. 

The  lady's  tiny  headgear  was  tossed  with 
indignation  and  she  said,  more  to  herself  then 
to  him,  "The  same  old" — I  thought  she  said 
"brute!" 

Evidently  the  violet-wearing  young  girl 
caught  a  glimpse  of  him,  for  she  called  out, 
"Why,  is  that  you,  Cousin  Dick?" 

"I  thought  I  was  myself,"  rejoined  he,  "until 
your  mother  called  me  a " 


8O  A    STUDY   IN    HANDS 

"Sh,  Dick,  don't  make  a  scandal!"  broke 
in  the  lavender  lady.  "And  now  tell  me  what 
brings  you  out  into  these  wilds?  Have  you 
come  out  to  the  wedding?" 

— or  to  the  funeral?"  interpolated  he. 

"That's  so  like  you,  Dick  dear,  so  quick  and 
so  clever,  but  hardly — well,  you  know  I  never 
meant  to  say  that!  Oh,  Dick,  I  have  just 
been  down  to  see  poor,  dear  Adelaide.  You 
know  she  is  much  worse  to-day.  I  only  saw 
her  for  a  minute — so  sad,  isn't  it?  It  would  be 
very  awkward  if  anything  should  happen  right 
now,  though  it  would,  of  course,  save  all  of  us 
a  long  journey  out  here  again,  just  now,  as  the 
hot  weather  is  coming  on." 

"Exactly!  And  is  the  day  and  hour  fixed  for 
both  functions?  I  hope  they  don't  conflict." 

"Dick,  how  can  you!  You  know  perfectly 
well  what  I  mean,  there  is  no  use  disguising 
matters,  it  is  absolutely  necessary  in  these 
crowded  times  to  make  arrangements  for  every 
thing  beforehand,  no  matter  how  much  one's 
feelings  are  concerned." 

"Quite  true,  and  that  is  why  I  want  to  know 
if  Adelaide  has  taken  this  into  her  consideration. 
Is  she  obliging  as  usual,  thinking  of  everybody 
except  herself?" 

"Now,  Dick!  I  shouldn't  have  known  her! 
Have  you  seen  Adelaide?" 

This  question  seemed  to  me  to  have  been 


A    STUDY    IN    HANDS  8l 

sprung  on  him  with  intent,  as  if  to  surprise  him 
into  some  betrayal,  but  he  did  not  give  the  slight 
est  sign  of  consciousness,  he  did  not  answer  her, 
but  rose  and,  touching  his  hat,  left  the  car. 

The  bustling,  lavender  lady  sank  into  the 
vacant  seat,  and  with  unabated  plenitude  of 
manner  said  to  the  friend  who  sat  next  to  her, 
"Cousin  Dick  just  hates  me  and  he  has  hated 
me  ever  since  that  terrible  winter  in  New  York. 
My,  but  that  was  a  season!  We  lived  on  social 
dynamite,  and  now  to  think  of  poor  Adelaide 
Perrin's  dying  out  here!  Such  a  beauty  as  she 
was,  too!  Everybody  raved  over  her.  But 
she  was  j/y,  though,  I've  always  said  so,  and  I 
always  will,  for  she  was  just  j/y,  that's  the  word! 

"I  couldn't  ever  see  why  Dick  fancied  her. 
But  he  just  hated  me;  he  seemed  to  think  that 
I  had  something  to  do  with  those  horrid  rumours 
that  were  flying  about  that  winter  after  they 
were  engaged — the  ones  that  finally  brought 
about  the  tragedy.  But  I  didn't  have  a  thing 
to  do  with  it,  why  should  I?  Of  course,  every 
body  talked  and  everybody  heard,  one  can't 
be  deaf  in  society;  but  Dick  chose  to  think  I 
was  to  blame. 

"You  saw  him  set  his  foot  on  my  glove  just 
now — the  brute!  Well,  that  matches  something 
he  did  once  before — that  very  winter  I  was 
speaking  about.  One  evening,  we  had  been 
dining  out,  and  I  laid  my  gloves  on  the  window- 


82  A    STUDY   IN    HANDS 

sill.  He  took  them  up  and  held  them,  looking 
at  them  for  a  moment,  then  he  deliberately 
threw  one  of  them  out  of  the  window  into  the 
rain.  You  may  believe  whether  I  was  mad  or 
not!  He  didn't  say  one  word.  'You  owe  me  a 
pair  of  gloves  for  that!'  said  I — I  was  perfectly 
furious  with  him. 

"You  owe  much  more,'  said  he,  with  a 
strange  smile,  the  kind  of  thing  that  makes 
your  blood  run  chilly  for  a  moment. 

"I  knew,  of  course,  what  he  meant;  it  was 
his  way  of  telling  me  that  he  hated  me  and  that 
he  held  me  accountable  for  some  of  the  talk 
that  was  flying  around  town  about  him  and 
Adelaide. 

"That  happened  more  than  fifteen  years  ago. 
Think  of  that  man's  memory!  Just  now  he 
wanted  to  remind  me  of  it.  I  know  him!  It 
was  just  two  weeks  before  the  date  set  for  his 
marriage  to  Adelaide. 

"The  talk  about  her  flirtation  with  that 
Washington  man  was  so  disagreeable  that  every 
body  was  wondering  if  the  wedding  would  ever 
come  off.  The  bets  were  against  it. 

"All  that  season  Adelaide  looked  exactly 
like  a  wraith,  but  she  held  her  head  pretty  high 
those  days,  and  the  trousseau  that  she  was  get 
ting  was  something  to  make  people  stare,  espe 
cially  as  Adelaide  never  had  much  money  to 
spend. 


A    STUDY   IN    HANDS  83 

"We  just  held  our  breath.  Of  course  Dick 
never  showed  in  any  way  that  he  knew  what  was 
being  said,  he  went  everywhere,  and  was  per 
fectly  devoted  to  Adelaide;  and  all  the  while 
these  horrid  things  were  in  the  air. 

"Finally  it  was  whispered  that  she  had  ac 
tually  been  secretly  married  to  the  Washington 
man.  His  name  was  Denio — Frank  N.  Denio. 
It's  a  perfectly  ghastly  tale!  But  I've  just  got 
to  tell  you — it  was  so  like  him  to  trample  on 
my  glove! 

"One  evening  at  a  ball  given  in  Adelaide's 
honour — the  very  swellest  thing  of  the  season — • 
just  before  supper,  Denio  was  found  on  the 
floor,  in  the  supper-room — dead. 

"There  wasn't  the  slightest  doubt  as  to  the 
manner  of  his  death.  Some  things  tell  their 
own  story — apoplexy  is  a  convenient  name  for 
inconvenient  deaths.  But  /  knew,  and  every 
body  else  knew — or  guessed.  I  can't  bear  to 
think  of  it,  even  after  this  long  time — but  they 
said  that  there  were  marks — well,  let's  drop  it." 

"You  surely  don't  mean  anything  so  terrible 
— why  did  you  think ?" 

"Did  you  ever  notice  Dick's  hands?  Well, 
the  next  time  you  meet  him  you  just  study  his 
hands.  Don't  ask  me  why,  you  just  look  at 
his  hands.  You  study  them — you  do  as  I 
tell  you.  Oh,  yes,  it  is  easy  to  call  me  queer, 
but  you  do  as  I  tell  you!" 


84  A    STUDY   IN   HANDS 

"What  became  of  Adelaide?" 

"Oh,  of  course  she  went  out  of  society;  then 
she  went  abroad,  and  finally  she  came  home. 
She  had  become  a  Catholic.  Later  she  came 
out  here  to  Chicago  to  live. 

"Did  I  tell  you  that  that  night  just  as  soon 
as  I  heard  what  had  happened  I  went  to  find 
her  and  they  told  me  she  had  gone  home  with 
a  headache?" 

"You  don't  suppose  she  knew!" 

"I  don't  suppose  anything.  I  am  just  telling 
you  what  I  know.  Ever  since  then  Adelaide 
has  devoted  herself  to  the  Church,  and  she  has 
spent  a  fortune  in  charities — I  call  it  charitable 
penance." 

"But  where  did  she  get  the  money  for  her 
charities?  I  thought  you  said  she  was  poor." 

"Not  a  cent  of  her  own!  But  all  the  same 
she  has  given  away  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  dollars  to  the  poor." 

"Where  in  the  world  did  it  come  from?" 

"Well,  Dick  is  rich,  for  one  thing;  where 
should  you  think  it  came  from?  You'd  better 
study  Dick's  hands,  as  I  said." 

"I  would  rather  have  you  tell  me,  I  may  never 
see  him  again.  Do  you  know?" 

"No,  I  don't  know,  nobody  knows,  that  is, 
what  I  know  wouldn't  stand  as  evidence  in 
a  court  of  law.  But  my  idea  is  that  Dick's 
hands  know  the  whole  story.  I  believe  they 


A    STUDY    IN    HANDS  85 

got  the  best  of  Dick  that  night  at  the  ball,  and 
that  is  saying  a  great  deal,  because  nobody  and 
nothing  else  ever  got  the  best  of  Dick  before  nor 
since.  Even  Adelaide  did  not,  in  the  end." 

Then  she  lowered  her  voice  and  said,  "To-day 
is  Thursday,  and  if  poor  dear  Adelaide  should 
pass  away  to-night,  it  is  all  arranged  that  the 
papers  shouldn't  have  the  news  till  the  next 
day — on  account  of  the  wedding,  you  know. 
That  simply  can't  be  put  off,  of  course." 

I  saw  no  more  of  the  lavender  lady;  but  I 
found  myself  following  with  unwonted  interest 
the  wedding — and  the  death-notices  in  the 
papers.  It  was  on  account  of  the  latter  that  I 
found  myself,  three  days  later,  before  the  Cathe 
dral  at  noon.  The  mist  was  drifting  in  from  the 
lake;  the  building  through  this  veil  grew  mag 
nificent  in  its  wavering  proportions.  Through 
the  Cathedral  door  passed  dim  figures,  shadowy 
like  gray  spirits. 

A  hearse  stood  there  with  many  attending 
carriages,  waiting  for  that  something  that  man 
may  not  take  with  him  at  his  departure,  but  is 
constrained  to  leave,  with  apologies,  to  the  kind 
offices  of  friends. 

I  saw  the  man  with  The  Hands  as  he  came 
down  the  steps,  and  I  stood  aside  to  let  him 
pass.  In  one  hand  he  held  a  bronze-like  leaf, 
such  a  leaf  as  one  might  take  from  the  hands  of 
the  dead. 


86  A    STUDY    IN    HANDS 

I  had  come  to  think  of  this  man  and  his  hands 
as  separate  personalities,  fellow-travellers  in 
time  and  space.  In  one  deed  done  by  the  hands 
the  man  had  but  acquiesced.  Thereafter  it  was 
the  hands  that  had  submitted. 

The  newspaper  paragraph  which  had  brought 
me  to  the  Cathedral  was  the  death-notice  of 
Adelaide  Perrin  Denio. 


A  FLIGHT  OF  FEATHERS 

THERE  were  three  of  them,  Jane  Bassett, 
Dilly  Bassett,  and  Sophronia  Bassett. 
There  had  been  a  fourth,  Deborah,  but 
she  had  married  and  died,  leaving  one  daughter. 
This  niece  of  the  Bassett  girls,  as  they  were 
called,  also  married  and  lived  in  New  York. 

She  could  never  find  time  to  run  up  to  the 
farm  to  see  her  aunts;  she  was  too  busy,  she 
lived  up  to  a  very  high  standard  which  might 
be  called  the  theory  of  the  balance  of  weight, 
measure,  and  proportion  as  applied  to  conduct. 
In  such  a  scheme  of  life,  of  course,  little  things 
must  give  way  to  the  more  important.  An  Old 
Ladies'  Home  would  outweigh  three  little  old 
aunts  in  the  country;  besides  which,  she  knew 
that  they  had  a  farm,  and  a  cow,  hens,  and 
geese,  what  could  they  need  of  her? 

The  Bassett  girls  were  not  in  need  of  patron 
age.  The  name  of  Bassett  was  the  best  in 
town,  it  inhered,  it  was  not  a  label  pasted  on; 
it  was,  so  to  speak  "dyed  in  the  wool."  It  was 
all-embracing,  it  included  even  the  little  black- 
and-tan  breed  of  dogs,  one  of  which  was  always 
in  evidence  at  the  farm. 

87 


88  A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS 

The  best  eggs  at  the  village  store  were  Bas- 
sett  eggs,  and  Bassett  eggs  brought  the  highest 
price  and  were  always  in  demand  for  hatching. 

Everything  in  Pa  Bassett's  time  had  brought 
the  highest  market  price,  everything  was  sold 
at  an  advantage  derived  from  the  name.  Their 
geese  were  superlative,  but  one  other  thing  that 
was  also  superlative  was  never  sold.  No  geese 
feathers  had  ever  been  offered  for  sale. 

Live  geese  feathers  were  the  Bassett  fetish. 
The  Bassett  girls  had  never  heard  the  word 
fetish  but  they  had  the  worship.  A  feather 
pillow  was  an  object  of  respectful  desire  and  of 
solicitous  preservation. 

Their  treasure-house  of  feathers  had  a  light- 
hearted  quality  that  does  not  obtain  where  gold 
is  hoarded. 

"Where's  Sophrony?"  asked  Dilly.  "I  ain't 
seen  her  sence  noonday." 

"Oh,  I  guess  she's  in  the  sullar,  empty'n  them 
pillers  of  hern." 

"Which  ones,  the  ones  that  Aunt  'Cindy  left 
her?" 

"No,  them  other  ones  she's  kep  so  long  in  the 
attic,  hanging  up  in  that  blue  cotton  bag." 

"You  don't  say  so!  Not  the  long  bolster, 
the  one  she  allers  meant  to  make  into  pillers 
for  the  spare  bed?" 

"I  dunno,  I  guess  'twas  them;  she  said  yister- 
day  that  she  was  goin'  to  be  pretty  busy  this 


A    FLIGHT   OF    FEATHERS  89 

week,  when  ole  Mis'  Marvin  ast  her  to  come 
over  to  her  house  and  help  her  to  make  jell." 

"It's  awful  draughty  down  sullar  when  the 
wind  is  in  the  east.  Has  she  got  her  head  tied 
up?" 

"I  shouldn't  wonder.  Sophrony  she's  gittin* 
careful;  she  says  she  ain't  goin'  to  die  till  she's 
got  her  last  ticking  washed  and  the  feathers  put 
back.  She's  got  one  set  put  back  already,  to 
my  own  knowledge,  besides  that  set  that  is  hern 
by  rights,  them  that  Eph's  wife  uses  on  her  own 
bed,  over  to  the  Corners;  they'd  ought  to  have 
been  Sophrony's,  she  was  named  for  Eph's 
mother.  Seems  as  if  they'd  ought  to  belong  to 
Sophrony,  but  she  ain't  one  to  make  a  fuss  with 
her  own  folks,  she's  kind  o'  set,  too,  when  she's 
made  up  her  mind,  fur  all  she's  so  still.  I  guess 
she'll  get  them  pillers  yet." 

The  two  old  heads  wagged  wisely.  Jane 
washed  up  the  blue  china  cups  carefully;  the 
aroma  of  home-made  soft  soap  was  in  the  air — 
it  is  like  incense  in  the  nostrils  of  a  thrifty  New 
England  woman.  And  what  is  soft  soap  but 
the  incarnation  of  an  idea,  the  means  of  purifica 
tion,  the  ultimate  symbol  of  thrift,  the  co 
ordinated  result  of  generations  of  economists 
with  a  passion  for  duty  regulated  by  seasons, 
the  recurrent  periods  marked  by  soft-soap 
(spring),  jell  (summer),  cider-apple-sass 
(autumn),  and  patch-work  quilt  (winter). 


9O  A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS 

"I  guess,"  said  Jane,  tentatively,  as  if  the 
idea  was  just  formulating  in  her  mind,  "I  guess 
I'll  jest  c'llect  the  pillers  that  belong  to  me  and 
hang  'em  out  in  the  sun.  I've  been  meanin'  to 
git  at  'em  all  the  spring,  it's  high  time  they  was 
looked  to;  they  smelt  jest  the  least  bit  musty 
the  last  time  I  seen  'em,  and  that  was  a  week 
ago  last  Saturday,  the  day  I  was  showin'  'em 
to  Ann  Munn's  sister.  I  was  dretful  'fraid 
she'd  notice  it." 

"It's  a  good  day  for  pillers,"  said  Dilly,  "but 
I  sha'n't  be  able  to  git  to  mine  to-day,  I'm 
afeared,  till  I  get  these  aprons  run  up.  The 
Ladies'  Aid  Society's  goin'  to  pack  up  the 
Missionary  box  to-morrow.  Mebby  I  can  hem 
'em  to-night." 

They  worked  in  silence  for  a  time,  their  faces 
as  gentle  and  as  vacant  as  the  pillow  ticks 
that  were  airing  on  the  clothesline.  The  line 
was  stretched  between  the  plum  tree  and  the 
tall  stake  that  supported  the  birdhouse. 

There  was  an  unusual  activity  in  the  air:  feath 
ers  were  flying,  feathers  not  propelled  by  bird 
bodies,  but  strange  feathers,  large  and  proud  like 
white  sails  of  ships;  the  birds  saw  them  whirled 
in  the  spring  wind  and  were  intent  on  securing 
them  for  the  linings  of  their  nests,  making  ready 
for  the  family  that  was  to  be. 

From  the  clothesline  fluttered  a  long  bolster 
cover,  its  striped  length  careering  madly,  now 


A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS  9! 

collapsed,  now  filled  to  plethoric  proportions. 
In  spite  of  Sophronia's  careful  picking  out  of 
every  feather  she  could  find,  stray  feathers 
found  freedom  in  the  breeze,  to  the  delight  of 
the  nest-builders. 

Down  in  the  cool,  damp  cellar  Sophronia  sat 
at  her  rites.  A  scant,  unearthly  light  came  in 
at  the  high,  unglazed  windows  above  her  head; 
an  earthy  smell  pervaded  the  place.  In  corners 
it  gave  way  to  other  odours:  in  one  place,  on  a 
shelf,  stood  a  pickle-jar,  and  around  it  sweet 
odours  of  spice  and  the  sharpness  of  vinegar 
clung;  the  potato-bin  had  an  arc  of  raw  perfume, 
while  a  promise  of  quickening  life  was  shown  in  a 
slender,  pale,  ghost-like  finger  of  a  sprout,  a 
finger  that  essayed  to  reach  the  light. 

Sophronia  sat  on  a  backless  wooden  chair; 
two  boards  were  placed  beneath  it  to  keep  the 
legs  from  sinking  in  the  soft  ground,  another 
board  kept  her  feet  from  the  dampness  that 
might  penetrate  to  her  old  bones.  She  ran 
to  bone  as  Jane  did  to  flesh,  a  sort  of  natural 
selection  by  which  one  became  the  prototype 
of  the  empty  and  one  of  the  filled  pillow. 

"There,"  said  Sophronia,  "you  ain't  a  mite 
too  fat  to  suit  me."  She  shook  and  patted 
the  bulging  pillow  and  smoothed  its  distended 
sides.  "Some  folks  seem  jest  possessed  to  git 
their  pillers  as  thin  as  a  rail.  I  ain't  that  kind. 
I  want  'em  fat,  so  as  to  fill  up  the  cold  spots  in 


92  A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS 

the  neck,  kind  of  comfortable  on  cold  nights. 
Jane  she's  different,  I  dunno  as  she's  got  any 
cold  spots;  she's  soft  and  warm,  she's  so  fat; 
she  takes  after  her  grandma  Bennett,  she  does." 

Sophronia  cocked  her  head  on  one  side  and 
eyed  the  companion  pillow  that  lay  on  the 
boards  at  her  feet.  "Sakes  alive!  I  dunno 
but  I've  gone  and  got  one  of  these  pillers  fatter'n 
t'other  one,  and  I  hefted  'em  careful,  too.  I 
declare  for't,  I  believe  I'll  have  to  rip  t'other 
one  a  mite  and  pull  out  a  handful  of  feathers." 

Her  face  wore  a  grave,  judicial  expression  as 
she  lifted  first  one  pillow  and  then  the  other, 
calculating  their  weights  and  comparing  them. 
She  might  well  have  the  gravity  of  a  judge  for 
she  was  weighing,  if  the  truth  were  known,  her 
own  moral  nature;  she  was  hefting  her  own 
strength  of  mind;  she  knew  in  her  innermost 
soul  that  there  was  not  the  sixteenth  of  an  ounce 
difference  in  the  weight.  She  was  indulging 
herself  in  a  debauch,  the  pillow-frenzy  was  upon 
her. 

Again  she  lifted  the  pillows  one  at  a  time;  she 
sighed  and  shook  her  head;  she  argued  with 
herself,  "Pretty  close,  pretty  nigh  the  same, 
mebby  the  right-hand  one  is  jest  the  least  mite 
bigger.  I  dunno  as  'tis  and  I  dunno  as  'tis. 
She  held  them  at  arm's  length,  one  in  her  left 
hand  and  one  in  her  right  hand,  then  she  half 
closed  her  eyes  so  as  to  leave  her  mental  sight 


A    FLIGHT   OF    FEATHERS  93 

unembarrassed,  and  slowly  and  cautiously  her 
left  eye  closed  a  little  tighter.  It  was  a  tenta 
tive  wink,  a  wink,  if  it  might  be  called  one, 
which  was  the  outcome  of  her  baser  nature,  a 
last  effort  to  overthrow  her  moral  conviction 
that  the  weight  of  the  two  pillows  was  equal; 
the  wink  tipped  the  scale.  "There  certainly 
is  a  difference.  I  must  take  out  a  handful  from 
this  one  and  put  it  into  that.  The  girls  will 
think  I  am  everlastingly  slow,  but  pillers  is 
pilfers,  and  feathers  is  feathers,  whatever  they 
may  say." 

Awhile  later  Sophronia  emerged  from  the 
cellar,  her  eyebrows  encrusted  with  down,  her 
headgear  awry,  looking  like  a  species  of  human 
hen. 

Dilly  was  alone  in  the  kitchen.  Jane  had 
gone  upstairs  to  get  to  work  on  her  pillows;  Dilly 
could  hear  her  beating  them  with  unremitting 
energy.  She  envied  her,  and  sewed  with  a  sullen 
rectitude  on  the  apron  for  the  missionaries. 

"Where's  Jane?"  demanded  Sophronia  with 
a  touch  of  sharpness. 

"Oh,  Jane's  up  in  the  attic  lookin'  over  them 
pillers  of  hern." 

"Which  pillers?" 

"I  dunno,  mebby  them  live  geese  feathers 
from  the  last  picking." 

"Umph!"  There  was  disapproval  in  this 
ejaculation;  she  creaked  upstairs  to  see  if  Jane 


94  A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS 

was  doing  exactly  what  she  knew  she  was  doing. 
She  fully  appreciated  the  necessity  for  her  own 
attention  to  her  pillows,  but  she  had  a  feeling 
that  Jane's  activities  were  a  sort  of  weak  imita 
tion,  a  vanity,  a  waste  of  time.  She  just  barely 
tolerated  Jane's  pillows. 

"Fur  the  lan's  sake,  what  be  you  doin',  Jane? 
You  make  enough  noise  to  wake  the  dead!" 

"I'm  just  beatin'  my  pillers  before  I  hang  'em 
out  in  the  sun;  how's  yourn  gittin'  on?" 

"First  rate.  I  suppose  you  and  Dilly  will 
think  I've  got  'em  too  thick,  but  I  like  mine  fat, 
you  know." 

Sophronia  and  Jane  went  to  the  Sewing  Circle 
that  afternoon.  Dilly  had  an  attack  of  accommo 
dating  rheumatism,  and  stayed  at  home.  She 
sewed  to  the  end  of  her  apron  seam,  and  then 
with  carefully  modulated  steps  she  mounted 
with  dignity  the  steep  stairs,  and  opened  the 
closet  where  she  kept  her  pillows.  She  was 
the  orderly  one  of  the  Bassett  sisters.  Between 
each  pillow  and  the  next  in  the  high  pile  lay  a 
carefully  spread  newspaper.  Little  slips  of 
paper  were  pinned  to  each  pillow  with  numbers 
written  on  them.  Three  pairs  lay  divided  with 
scrupulous  care.  She  lifted  them  carefully,  and 
lovingly  laid  them  one  by  one  on  a  chair  which 
she  dusted  beforehand;  then  she  wiped  off  the 
shelves  with  a  dry  cloth  and  laid  the  pillows 
reverently  back.  Her  foot  hit  the  wooden  cradle 


A    FLIGHT   OF    FEATHERS  95 

that  had  been  stored  for  fifty  years  beneath 
the  lower  shelf;  it  rocked  with  a  homely,  sym 
pathetic  joggle.  Dilly  was  very  happy  in  com 
munion  with  her  sacred  pillows. 

When  the  last  one  of  the  Bassett  sisters  had 
been  separated  by  death  from  these  idols,  and 
the  pillow  roll-call  sounded,  there  were  five 
pillows  that  responded,  in  Jane's  division,  there 
were  three  pairs  to  Billy's  credit,  and  eight 
plethoric  forms  were  in  line  as  Sophronia's 
contribution. 

This  accretion  of  three  lifetimes,  this  light- 
hearted  company  represented  the  imaginative 
flights  of  the  three  sisters,  and  this  outward 
sign  of  inward  aspiration  bore  this  inscription: 
"To  our  beloved  niece,  in  token  of  our  affection 
and  our  admiration,  we  leave  these  pillows  as  a 
slight  reminder  of  her  three  aunts."  Signed, 
"Aunt  Jane,  Aunt  Dilly,  Aunt  Sophronia." 

When  at  her  breakfast  table  in  New  York 
the  niece  read  the  letter  written  by  the  minister 
of  the  Baptist  Church  to  whom  this  bequest 
had  been  entrusted,  she  sat  up  rigid  with  as 
tonishment  and  disapproval. 

"John,"  said  she,  "did  you  ever  hear  any 
thing  so  trying.  The  minister  writes  that  the 
last  of  my  old  aunts  has  died." 

"  I  am  sorry  but  I  suppose  she  was  pretty  old." 

"Yes,  but  that  is  not  the  worst  of  it,  they 
have  left  me  all  their  pillows." 


96  A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS 

"Well,  pillows  are  useful  things.  It  seems  to 
me  you  once  told  me  that  their  hobby  was 
pillows." 

"I  should  think  it  was!  How  many  do  you 
think  they  left?  Nineteen  pillows  all  packed 
and  waiting  for  me  to  send  for  them.  Nineteen, 
and  I  never  have  or  will  use  a  pillow.  I  won't 
let  the  children  use  them.  I  believe  they  are 
unsanitary  and  worse  than  useless.  You  are 
the  only  Sybarite  in  the  family,  and  you  know 
what  I  think  of  that." 

"Splendid  chance  to  do  something  for  your 
Old  Ladies'  Home.  It  would  be  a  fitting  thing 
to  commemorate  the  thrift  and  energy  of  the 
old  aunts,  and  benefit  the  Home  at  the  same 
time." 

"What  an  idea!  You  know  I  couldn't  con 
scientiously  give  the  Home  anything  that  I 
disapprove  of  for  myself." 

"Couldn't  you  stretch  your  conscience  for 
once,  as  a  recognition  of  the  well-meant  gift?" 

"No,  I  couldn't,  I  really  couldn't." 

"Well,  give  them  to  a  foundling  hospital, 
babies  haven't  consciences,  and  they  must  have 
pillows." 

"No,  John,  don't  quibble,  you  know  my 
principles;  but  what  shall  I  do?" 

"Give  them  to  me." 

"You?    What  an  idea!" 

"Yes,  give  them  to  me,  I  won't  give  them  to 


A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS  97 

any  hospital,  infant  asylum,  old  ladies'  home, 
or  any  blessed  institution,  nor  to  any  individual. 
'Cross  my  heart  and  hope  to  die'  if  I  do." 

"But  what  in  the  world  will  you  do  with 
them?" 

"That  will  be  my  one  and  only  secret  of  a 
lifetime.  You  will  trust  me?" 

"But  it  is  so  ridiculous!" 

"Not  at  all,  you  don't  want  them  and  I  do." 

"Where  are  you  going  to  have  them  sent?" 

"That's  a  part  of  my  secret." 

"Well,"  said  his  wife,  reluctantly,  "here  is 
the  minister's  address.  Honour  Wight,  no 
breaking  of  your  promise?  I  can't  think  what 
you  mean  to  do  with  them." 

And  he  never  broke  his  promise,  but  when  he 
rides  to  his  fishing-camp  in  a  buckboard,  for  it  is 
forty  miles  from  the  railroad,  he  likes  to  lead 
the  driver  on  to  telling  about  the  time  when 
there  was  a  strange  downfall  of  feathers  one 
night  in  the  early  spring.  He  says  that  "when 
the  folks  down  in  the  'holler*  woke  up  one 
morning  the  ground  was  white  in  the  corners 
of  the  fences  and  sheltered  spots,  and  they 
thought  it  had  snowed,  but  when  they  looked 
the  patches  turned  out  to  be  feathers;  the  birds 
lined  their  nests  with  down  for  the  whole  sea 
son." 

"Queerest  thing  you  ever  see,"  said  the 
driver,  "there  had  been  a  fresh  breeze  from  the 


98  A    FLIGHT    OF    FEATHERS 

mountains  where  they  seemed  to  come  from. 
But  you  know  folks  say  that  sometimes  it  rains 
frogs  or  toads.  I  never  seed  it,  but  I've  heard 
tell  on  it.  And  I  can't  see  why  feathers  is  any 
stranger  than  frogs,  anyway  I  have  seen  them 
feathers,  and  what's  more  I've  got  a  bottle 
full  that  I  picked  up,  and  kep'." 

The  husband  of  the  niece  of  the  three  old 
aunts  smiles  as  he  listens  to  this  tale,  for  he 
likes  to  think  of  that  flight  of  feathers. 


AN  EXPERIMENT  IN  TIME 

I  WAS  going  down  hill,  feeling  tired  and  dis 
couraged.     The  landscape  was  monotonous, 
the  hills  seemed  low,  and  the  birds  sang  only 
occasionally  in  the  hedges. 

Suddenly  it  came  to  me  how  good,  how  very 
good,  everything  had  been  to  my  palate  as  a 
child.  I  thought  how  much  easier  the  journey 
would  be  if  I  could  go  back  just  for  a  few  min 
utes.  I  turned  quickly,  retraced  the  few  feet  of 
descent  from  the  brow  of  the  hill  over  which 
I  had  come;  then  I  made  a  desperate  leap  across 
the  chasm  of  middle  life,  and  passed  rapidly 
back  over  the  highway  of  time. 

I  stood  for  a  moment  by  the  enchanted  pool 
of  youth,  where  those  who  sail  know  not  whether 
the  boat  be  in  the  sky,  or  the  sky  in  the  water, 
but  sit  watching  the  reflections  of  themselves 
and  their  companions  entangled  with  the  stars. 
I  passed  through  the  white  birches  on  the  bank 
to  the  farther  side,  then  along  the  fields  till  I 
came  to  the  brown  house  by  the  river;  I  did  not 
look  carefully  at  the  house,  but  I  knew  that  the 
shutters  were  closed.  I  went  through  the  or 
chard,  up  the  hill,  climbed  the  fence,  and  found 

99 


IOO  AN    EXPERIMENT    IN    TIME 

myself  at  the  edge  of  the  beech-woods.  There, 
on  a  stone,  exactly  where  I  expected  to  find  him, 
sat  the  little  brown  kobold. 

"Good  afternoon,"  said  I. 

"Good  afternoon,"  he  returned,  pleasantly. 

"I  am  glad  to  find  you  here,"  said  I. 

"I  expected  you,"  he  answered. 

"Then  you  know  what  I  want?" 

"I  can  guess,"  replied  he. 

I  sat  down  on  a  stone  near  him,  for  my  knees 
felt  tired  after  my  climb.  The  kobold  looked 
exactly  like  the  picture  of  him  in  my  heart, 
which  was  taken  directly  from  a  portrait  that 
was  in  an  old  book  I  once  had.  I  waited  for 
him  to  speak,  but  as  he  sat  still  I  said,  "What 
is  it  that  I  want?" 

"You  want  checkerberries  and  birch-bark  to 
taste  just  as  they  did  when  you  were  a  child." 

"I  do  indeed,"  I  returned. 

"You  want  to  fight  violets  with  me." 

"What  else?" 

"You  want  to  make  a  burdock  basket  with  a 
handle  that  won't  fit  on  straight,  and  that 
breaks  every  time  you  lift  the  basket." 

"Oh,  I  do,"  and  I  laughed.     "What  else?" 

"You  want  to  make  a  whistle  out  of  willow, 
yellow  willow,  in  early  spring  when  the  sap 
is  running." 

"Of  course." 

"You  want  to  dig  flag-root,  and  boil  it  in 


AN    EXPERIMENT   IN   TIME  IOI 

sugar  until  it  is  all  sweet,  and  then  when  it  is 
cold,  but  still  sticky,  you  want  to  carry  it 
round  in  your  pocket." 

"Yes,  yes,  I  do." 

"You  want  to  squeeze  the  blue  juice  out  of 
the  spiderwort  flowers,  and  call  it  ink ' 

"Yes.     What  else?" 

"Don't  interrupt  me  so;  I  hadn't  finished. 
And  you  want  to  be  always  thinking  that  you  are 
going  to  make  some  ink  out  of  pokeweed  berries, 
so  you  want  to  be  always  looking  for  the  berries 
that  you  think  you  are  going  to  make  ink  of." 

"Oh, yes,  I  understand." 

"You  want  to  eat  sassafras  leaves  because 
they  are  sticky;  and  sassafras  bark  and  sassafras 
root  because  they  smart;  and  to  cut  spicewood 
because  it  is  spicy;  and  chew  beech  leaves  be 
cause  they  are  sour;  and  suck  the  honey-bags 
of  columbine  flowers  because  they  are  sweet; 
and  eat  the  false  apple  of  the  wild  azalea  because 
it  has  no  taste." 

"And  other  things,  too?" 

"Oh,  yes,  you  must  eat  the  young  roots  of 
early  grass,  and  call  them  onions." 

"Anything  else?" 

"You  want  to  make  horsehair  rings,  three  of 
them,  one  pure  black,  one  a  yellowish-white, 
and  one  mixed,  fasten  them  very  clumsily 
together,  and  wear  the  prickly  knot  on  the  inside 
of  your  ringer." 


102  AN    EXPERIMENT    IN    TIME 

"  Dear  me — yes,  yes,  yes." 

"You  want  to  make  a  doll  out  of  the  rose  of 
Jerusalem,  with  sash  and  bonnet-strings  of 
striped  grass." 

"Of  course,  and— 

"You  want  to  squeeze  the  yellow  juice  of  a 
weed  that  grows  by  the  stone  step  on  the  north 
side  of  the  house,  and  put  it  on  your  fingers  to 
cure  warts." 

"Yes,  I  will,  and- 

"You  must  never  kill  a  toad,  because  if  you 
do  you  will  find  blood  in  the  milk  that  you  have 
for  supper." 

"I  never  will  kill  a  toad,"  said  I. 

"You  want  to  tell  all  the  lady-bugs  to  fly 
away  home  because  their  houses  are  on  fire  and 
the  children  alone." 

"To  be  sure." 

"You  want  to  chew  the  gum  of  the  spruce, 
also  the  gum  of  cherry  trees." 

"I  do!" 

"And  to  eat  the  cheeses  that  grow  on  marsh- 
mallows." 

"Yes." 

"And  you  want  to  make  trumpets  out  of 
pumpkin-vine  stalks,  and  cornstalk  fiddles;  you 
can't  make  the  fiddles  ever  play,  of  course." 

"Oh,  no,  of  course  not,  never." 

"But  you  must  go  on  making  them  just  the 
same." 


AN    EXPERIMENT   IN   TIME 

"Indeed  I  shall." 

"You  want  to  brew  rose-water  wine." 

"Yes." 

"And  eat  the  seeds  of  sweet  fern." 

"Of  course." 

"You  must  steal  cinnamon  sticks  and  ground 
cinnamon  and  sugar,  and  carry  them  round  in  a 
wooden  pill-box." 

"Must  I  jtez/them?" 

"Certainly  you  must,  a  good  many  times;  and 
then  some  evening  when  the  frogs  are  piping, 
and  the  sky  is  a  green-blue,  and  there  is  one  very 
white  star  looking  at  you,  you  must  tell  your 
mother  all  about  it." 

"Oh — yes."  After  a  pause  I  asked,  "What 
else?" 

"Did  I  mention  eating  violets  with  salt?" 
inquired  the  kobold. 

"No,  you  said  'fight  violets'." 

"Well  you  must  eat  them, too, sometimes  with 
salt,  and  sometimes  with  sugar." 

"I'll  remember  that.     What  else?" 

"Whenever  you  eat  oysters  you  must  always 
look  for  a  pearl — always^  no  matter  whether 
they  are  stewed  or  raw;  remember  that — always 
expect  to  find  a  pearl." 

"I  will,"  said  I;  "always." 

"And  you  must  have  a  secret  hoard."  The 
kobold  said  this  impressively  in  a  low,  hollow 
voice,  and  I  asked  him  in  a  whisper,  "What  of?" 


IO4  AN    EXPERIMENT   IN    TIME 

"Of  a  piece  of  shoemaker's  wax,  of  one  big 
drop  of  quicksilver  in  a  homeopathic  glass 
bottle,  a  broken  awl,  and  four  pieces  of  chalk- 
one  piece  red,  soft  and  crumbly,  one  yellow, 
and  two  white  bits  of  different  lengths;  they 
must  all  be  so  dirty  that  you  have  to  scratch 
them  to  know  which  is  which — you  understand 
that?" 

"Oh,  yes,  I  understand." 

"And  you  must  have  one  leather  shoe-string, 
a  piece  of  red  sealing-wax,  and  one  very  small, 
'teenty'  bit  of  goldstone  sealing-wax,  one  piece 
of  iridescent  button-paper  that  crinkles  when 
you  bend  it,  and  a  button-mould." 

"What  should  I  do  with  the  button-mould?" 

"Make  a  top,  of  course,  with  a  match  for  a 
stem." 

"  Kobold,  should  I  be  happy  if  I  had  all  these 
things?" 

"Perfectly,"  said  he  with  decision;  "but  you 
wouldn't  know  that  you  were  happy." 

"Why  shouldn't  I?" 

"The  answer  to  that  is  a  question." 

"What  is  it?" 

"Do  you  know  it  now?"  asked  he,  with  his 
eyes  suddenly  turned  in  toward  his  own  nose, 
till  I  couldn't  tell  whether  he  was  looking  at 
me  or  not. 


A  GAME  OF  SOLITAIRE 

PART    ONE 

THE  lamp  was  lit,  and  the  table  drawn 
close  to  the  fire.     In  Florence,  when  the 
tooth  of  December  is  set  against  the  late 
roses,  a  fire  is  a  good  thing.     Katharine,  being 
an  artist,  was  indulging  herself  in   the  damp 
luxury  of  living  in  an  old  palazzo,  up  five  flights 
of  stone  stairs,  and  she  tended  her  fire  as  if  it 
were  a  shrine.     Katharine's  family  had  a  slight 
inclination  toward  rheumatism  which  justified 
her  in  the  seeming  luxury  of  a  blaze. 

Naturally,  when  Josephine  Bromley  tapped 
out  a  Spanish-fandango-sort-of  summons  on 
the  door,  it  cost  Katharine,  knowing  immedi 
ately  who  it  was,  a  moment  of  regret  to  be 
obliged  to  admit  so  unlooked-for  and  flighty  a 
factor  into  her  orderly  evening. 

"It  rains,"  announced  Josephine,  shedding 
her  wraps  from  her  shoulders  to  the  floor  as 
if  they  had  been  autumn  leaves  or  detachable 
bits  of  bark  that  she  had  done  with.  "It  rains, 
and  it  is  as  dark  as  Egypt,  and  you  are  a  dear, 
Katharine!"  she  said,  making  straight  to  the 

105 


IO6  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

fire  and  spreading  out  her  thin  hands  before 
it. 

"And  you  are  a  disgraceful  tramp,"  responded 
Katharine  with  more  than  a  show  of  sincerity 
in  her  tone.  "And  besides  that,  you  only  call 
me  'a  dear'  because  I  happen  to  have  common 
sense  and  a  fire  for  you  to  hover  over." 

"Yes,  that's  true,  and  whatever  should  we 
poor  good-for-nothings  do  if  it  were  not  for 
you  heaven-born,  worthy  ones  to  look  after 
us?"  And  Josephine,  dropping  to  her  knees, 
leaned  forward  in  rapturous  delight  toward 
the  blaze.  "Yes,  you  are  the  dearest  of  dears, 
Katharine." 

The  "dearest  of  dears"  looked  scornfully 
at  the  pile  of  wet  wraps  that  lay  by  the  door, 
and  made  no  response  to  this  flattery,  but  said, 
"I  suppose,  of  course,  your  feet  are  wet?" 

"Of  course,"  admitted  Josephine,  promptly, 
as  she  rose  and  held  up  one  slim  foot  after  the 
other,  shaking  her  head  with  a  look  of  disappro 
bation  in  her  face,  as  if  her  feet  had  been  guilty 
of  an  indiscretion  against  her  own  supervision. 

"And  your  cough  doesn't  get  any  better?" 

"Not  any  better  at  all,"  assented  Josephine 
in  an  alien,  pitying  tone  which  she  often  used 
toward  herself. 

"You  ought  to  be  sent  to  an  asylum,  or 
home,"  said  Katharine  with  asperity. 

"  I  should  like  to  go  home,"  murmured  Joseph- 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE  IO7 

ine,  plaintively,  "if  only  to  see  my  little  great- 
grandmother  once  more." 

Katharine  sniffed.  She  thought  she  knew  all 
Josephine's  wiles  of  manner,  but  she  had  never 
before  heard  of  this  little  great-grandmother 
that  was  so  dear.  "I  never  heard  you  speak 
of  your  great-grandmother  before."  The  tone 
seemed  to  convey  a  challenge. 

"No,  maybe  not,"  said  Josephine,  sweetly; 
"but  you  know  I  must  have  had  one." 

"I  suppose  so.  I  never  gave  the  matter  a 
thought  before.  You  do  without  so  many 
things  that  most  people  consider  essential  that  I 
did  not  know  what  your  ideas  might  be  as  to 
grandmothers." 

"My  great-grandmother  must  have  been  very 
much  like  me  when  she  was  young,"  Josephine 
went  on  meditatively. 

"I  wonder,  then,  that  she  ever  lived  to  have 
great-grandchildren."  This  was  said  venge- 
fully. 

"Oh,  she  didn't.  She  only  lived  to  have 
children." 

"Then  what  in  the  name  of  common  sense 
are  you  sentimentalizing  over,  with  all  this 
nonsense  about  going  home  to  see  her?" 

"Why,  I  always  go  and  visit  her  when  I  am 
at  home.  She  lies  in  a  sunny,  cozy  little  grave 
yard  on  a  hill.  I  love  to  go  there.  She  must 
have  been  delightful  when  she  was  alive." 


IO8  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

"Like  yourself,  Josephine,  as  you  mentioned 
a  few  minutes  ago." 

"Did  I  say  that?  Well,  I  am  sure  she  must 
have  been  very  much  like  me.  In  the  first 
place,  she  looks  like  me:  there  is  a  picture  of 
her  cut  in  the  gray  slate  headstone.  She  is 
represented  as  lying  in  a  prettily  shaped  narrow 
coffin,  and  on  her  arm  is  the  child  that  died  with 
her.  The  inscription  reads — 'In  memory  of 
Josephine,  the  wife  of  Adoniram  Hinton,  who 
departed  this  life  December  twenty-sixth,  1785, 
in  the  thirtieth  year  of  her  age.  On  her  left 
arm  lieth  the  infant  which  died  with  her.'  Just 
at  this  season,  Katharine,  and  isn't  that  a  pretty 
thought — she  and  her  baby  asleep  all  these 
years  together?" 

"You  are  cheerful  to-night,  Josephine,"  was 
Katharine's  only  reply. 

Josephine  held  up  her  flexible  hands  and 
moved  them  rapidly  from  side  to  side  before  her 
face  "to  make  oak  leaves  out  of  the  flames," 
she  explained  to  Katharine.  Then,  rising 
abruptly,  she  caught  up  the  guitar  and  waved 
it  to  and  fro,  Spanish  fashion,  brushing  her 
fingers  across  it  as  it  swung,  making  a  sort  of 
breathing  harmony,  to  which  she  hummed  an 
accompaniment  in  a  high  voice  which  was  thin 
but  vibrant.  She  was  slender,  almost  meagre; 
her  dark  hair  hung  in  wisps  as  it  had  dried  after 
being  wet  by  the  rain.  It  gave  her  an  elfish 


A   GAME   OF   SOLITAIRE  ICX) 

look,  but  with  all  her  uncanny  thinness  and 
unexpectedness,  there  was  a  fascination  about 
her  that  baffled  Katharine  even  more  than  did 
Josephine's  faults,  for  it  seemed  to  ward  off 
criticism;  and  it  vexed  Katharine  that  she  could 
not  be  more  vexed  at  this  wayward  thing. 

Josephine  never  waited  for  other  people's 
moods  to  set  the  pace.  She  was  quite  absorbed 
in  her  own  guitar  swinging  till  the  air  reminded 
her  of  another  Spanish  song;  then  she  threw  her 
self  into  a  crisp  and  saucy  attitude  and  broke 
into  a  Bolero  that  ended  in  a  high,  shrill  note 
which  seemed  to  fill  the  room  with  matadors, 
senoritas,  mantillas,  and  pomegranates,  also 
with  love  and  treason. 

"Carmen,"  said  Katharine,  grimly,  "will 
you  please  attend  to  the  fire?" 

But  Josephine  did  not  stop  her  singing. 
Katharine  put  a  fresh  stick  on  the  coals.  From 
where  she  sat  she  could  see  that  Josephine's 
dress  was  drawing  wet  hieroglyphics  on  the 
waxed  floor.  The  dress  was  very  shabby — 
a  beggar  skirt — but  worn  with  picturesque 
style. 

"I  am  going  to  be  married,"  abruptly  an 
nounced  Josephine,  still  thrumming  on  the 
guitar.  "Yes,  I  remember  now  that  is  what 
I  came  to  tell  you.  I  knew  there  was  something 
I  meant  to  speak  of." 

"And  that  is  why  you  were  so  keen  to  go  and 


IIO  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

see  your  little  great-grandmother  who  lives  in 
the  churchyard  and  who  is  so  like  you?" 

"Perfectly  natural  in  me.  I  was  wondering 
how  she  felt  when  she  was  engaged  to  be  married 
—before  she  was  the  wife  of  Adoniram  Hinton 
and  had  earned  her  little  epitaph!" 

"Don't  tell  me,  Josephine,  that  you  are  going 
to  marry  Smith — the  dismal  Smith  who  ought 
never  to  have  come  over  here  to  ruin  canvas. 
He  ought  to  be  back  to-day  in  Vermont,  helping 
his  father  on  the  farm.  He  will  never  earn 
enough  to  buy  a  bushel  of  potatoes,  by  art." 

"Smithy,  little  Smithy?  Oh,  no!  He's  gone, 
you  know,  gone  away,  disappeared,  nobody 
knows  where.  Paid  all  his  debts  and  disap 
peared,  improvident  fellow." 

"Do  you  sleep  well  at  night,  Josephine,  with 
all  your  moral  responsibilities?" 

"No,  I  don't  sleep  very  well.  I  have  night 
mares."  This,  again,  in  her  grieved  and  pitying 
tone.  She  was  busy  building  up  a  vast  and 
comfortable  nest  near  the  fire  and  she  did  not 
seem  to  notice  the  air  of  disapprobation  that 
radiated  from  Katharine. 

Josephine's  accessories  always  favoured  her. 
That  was  one  reason  why  it  was  so  hard  to  at 
tach  any  ethical  obligation  to  her.  Even  her 
atmosphere  defied  one  to  attribute  responsibili 
ties.  Katharine  was  almost  the  only  person 
who  ever  tried  to,  and  she  failed.  She  watched 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE  III 

her  now  as  she  propped  up  the  cushions  against 
the  copper  brocca.  This  proving  insecure,  the 
fire  screen  was  tilted  back,  the  cushions  were 
heaped  up,  and  into  them  sank  Josephine  with 
a  contented  "There!" 

"I  suppose,  then,"  remarked  Katharine  after 
a  pause,  "that  you  are  going  to  throw  yourself 
away  on  that  count  who  has  been  dangling 
around  wherever  you  have  been  this  fall.  He 
is,  if  possible,  one  degree  worse  than  Smith. 
Smith  was  respectable." 

"No,  I  couldn't  bring  myself  to  marry  the 
count.  I  tried  to;  really  I  did,"  replied  Jose 
phine,  as  if  hoping  that  Katharine  would  condone 
her  failure  in  view  of  her  efforts. 

"The  only  other  alternative,  then,  is  an  old 
rich  man.  You  have  sold  yourself." 

"Never!  Katharine,  I  am  pained.  This 
is  an  old  friend  of  my  mother's." 

"I  knew  it,"  said  Katharine,  dejectedly.  "I 
knew  it  would  be,  of  course,  someone  who  was 
shiftless,  bad,  or  rich  and  old." 

"An  old  friend  of  my  mother's,"  went  on 
Josephine,  undisturbedly.  "I  met  him  years 
and  years  ago  in  America  when  mother  was  liv 
ing.  He  came  to  see  us  and  he  took  a  great 
fancy  to  me.  I  was  only  a  child  then,  besides, 
he  had  a  wife,"  added  she,  with  one  of  her  sud 
den  smiles  that  always  exasperated  Katharine; 
they  meant  so  much  or  so  little,  according  to 


112  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

the  next  remark.  Josephine's  smile  always 
left  one  feeling  that  however  it  was  construed, 
the  opposite  would  be  found  to  be  true. 

"Now  his  wife  is  dead,  and  he  wants  to  marry 
me,"  continued  Josephine. 

"Where  have  you  been  seeing  him?" 

"That's  part  of  the  fun  of  it.  I  haven't  been 
seeing  much  of  him.  We  have  mostly  cor 
responded." 

"Oh!"  groaned  Katharine. 

"We  shall  be  married  in  January,"  Josephine 
went  on,  "here  in  Florence.  He  lives  in  Lon 
don,  but  he  will  go  to  America  to  live  if  I  want 
him  to,  or  anywhere  else,  for  that  matter.  I 
am  getting  my  trousseau  ready.  I  bought  a 
dear,  delightful  brass  kettle  to-day,  big  and  so 
comfortable  looking." 

Katharine  laughed  in  spite  of  her  indignation. 
"  I  suppose  you  will  have  towers  and  domes  and 
frescoes  in  your  trousseau,  they  would  be  so 
useful  in  America." 

"I  did  buy  a  Madonna  to-day,"  said  Jose 
phine  impressively,  raising  herself  and  clasping 
her  knees  with  her  thin,  enthusiastic  fingers, 
"a  real  old  cracked  Madonna,  with  the  loveliest 
little  Christus  you  ever  saw.  I  cleaned  it  off 
with  my  own  fingers.  I  worked  for  hours  over 
it.  I  rubbed  off  all  the  old  sticky  varnish 
(Smithy  taught  me  how  just  before  he  disap 
peared,  poor  dear)  and  then  I  steamed  it  over 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE  IIJ 

an  alcohol  bath  and  the  cracks  all  drew  to 
gether,  and  then  I  varnished  it  freshly,  and  now 
it  is  my  own  beautiful  Madonna — all  my  own! 
And  I  am  going  to  buy  a  hundred-franc  frame 
for  it.  I  paid — just  think,  Katharine,  and  don't 
scold — I  paid  five  hundred  francs  for  the  picture 
alone!  Oh,  isn't  it  glorious  to  be  rich!" 

Katharine  looked  at  the  frayed  bottom  of 
Josephine's  dress,  and  her  wholesome  common 
sense  revolted  against  this  mothlike  creature's 
burning  wings  in  the  awful  to  be. 

"Josephine,"  said  she,  "either  don't  tell  me 
any  more  of  your  doings,  or  else  let  me  advise 
you.  You  will  ruin  yourself.  How  dare  you 
spend  five  hundred  francs  for  anything — any 
thing  except  actual  necessities?  And  where 
are  you  to  get  your  bread  and  butter  if  this  thing 
falls  through?" 

"cThis  thing,'  as  you  curiously  call  my  engage 
ment,  is  not  going  to  fall  through,  and  besides 
I  never  did  care  much  for  bread  and  butter; 
and  so,  just  for  once  in  my  life,  I  am  going  to 
spend  every  cent  I  have,  or  can  get  hold  of,  and 
I  am  going  to  spend  it  for  luxuries  and  I  am 
going  to  enjoy  it.  Now  to-morrow,"  said  she, 
as  she  picked  up  her  wet  wraps  and  surveyed 
them  at  arm's  length  with  loathing,  "to-morrow 
I  shall  buy  myself  a  fur  wrap,  long,  ample,  and 
exclusive,  with  a  dash  of  the  sumptuous  to  it. 
No,  Katharine,  you  may  save  your  sermon;  I  am 


114  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

going  now  to  be  happy  and  look  rich.     Later 
I  shall  be  rich  and  look  happy." 

A  week  later,  Josephine's  vivacious  face 
blossomed  above  a  fur  wrap  whose  collar  just 
revealed  her  pink  ears.  She  looked  both  rich 
and  happy. 

PART  TWO 

"  Katharine,"  said  Josephine  a  few  days  after 
she  had  announced  her  engagement,  "would 
you  believe  that  one  could  actually  buy  and 
have  and  hold  forever,  for  one's  very  own,  a 
great,  splendid  cathedral  lamp  that  has  been 
burning  for  nobody  knows  how  many  centuries 
before  some  saint?  Well,  believe  it  or  not,  I've 
done  it,  and  I  am  going  to  try  and  live  up  to  it— 
in  spiritual  faith  and  constancy,  you  know.  I 
shall  have  it  hung  right  over  my  dressing  table 
when  I  get  settled  in  my  new  home  in  America. 
I  mean  to  put  every  scrap  that  I  have  collected 
here  in  Italy  in  my  own  room,  so  that  I  shall 
never  forget  how  happy  I  have  been  here — here 
in  the  land  of  joy!" 

"When  is  your  fiance  coming?" 

"Oh,  to-morrow,  or  yesterday,  or  sometime. 
You  see,  he  was  to  have  come  last  week  but  it 
fell  through,  all  along  of  some  sister  of  his. 
Katharine,  he  is  rich,  actually  rich!  It  is  al 
most  ridiculous  my  marrying  a  rich  man." 


A   GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

"Quite,"  was  the  short  reply.  "Do  you  love 
him?" 

"Of  course  I  do.  What  a  question!  Only — 
well,  I  do  not  mind  confiding  to  you,  dear,  that 
I  am  just  a  little  disappointed  to  find  he  doesn't 
seem  to  care  one  bit  about  Madonnas.  He  says 
they  are  all  trash  and  bigotry,  and  I  am  afraid 
he  is  too  old  to  change.  I  wrote  to  him  yester 
day  that  he  must  try  to  look  at  Madonnas  as 
purely  decorative.  I  am  hoping  that  that  will 
appeal  to  him." 

"Josephine,  you  are  intolerable.  You  don't 
deserve  to  be  happy.  You  are  too  shallow  for 
anything.  I  wish  something  could  make  you 
serious." 

"Why,  Katharine!  I  thought  you  of  all 
people  would  look  on  marriage  as  serious.  Why, 
my  dear,  just  being  engaged  has  utterly  changed 
me.  I  have  become  conventional.  I  don't 
even  think  of  going  out  shopping  without  a  maid, 
and  you  must  remember  how  I  used  to  roam 
about.  The  other  day,  when  I  went  to  meet  Mr. 
Griffith,  I  took  Adela  along — truly  I  did." 

"  Meet  him  ?  Meet  Mr.  Griffith  ?  When  and 
where  have  you  been  meeting  him?" 

"Why,  I  meant  to  tell  you  that  he  was  to  have 
been  here  last  Friday.  He  wrote  that  he  would 
arrive  by  the  eleven-thirty  train — in  the  morn 
ing,  you  know.  We  were  all  ready  for  him  to 
breakfast  with  us.  Such  a  pretty  salad — all 


Il6  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

green  and  gold;  I  arranged  it  myself  in  my  old 
majolica  bowl,  with  lots  of  flowers  and  fixings. 
Then  came  a  telegram  saying  that  he  must  hurry 
right  through  Florence  on  an  earlier  train,  so 
as  to  meet  his  sister  who  had  been  very  ill  some 
where  in  Egypt,  and  was  on  her  way  to  Naples. 
He  arranged  it  for  me  to  meet  him  at  the  train; 
and  then  he  begged  me  to  go  on  with  him  as  far 
as  that  place  with  the  queer  name,  where  they 
meet  the  incoming  train  from  Rome,  you  know. 
Of  course  I  went.  Sister  Maggie  couldn't  go; 
I  wouldn't  let  her  go  to  the  station  with  me,  but 
I  took  Adela,  and  put  her  in  a  second-class  com 
partment.  And  I  did  have  a  perfect  dream  of  a 
time!  Oh,  Katharine,  isn't  joy  easy  to  bear? 
And  I  know  I  looked  well  in  my  fur  coat." 

"How  old  is  Mr.  Griffith?" 

"Oh,  I  am  sure  I  don't  know — some  tedious 
age,  I  suppose.  There  is  nothing  so  tedious  as 
age.  We  ought  to  begin  at  the  other  end  and 
wind  up  as  babies,  I  have  always  thought  so." 

"Some  of  us  do." 

"Oh,  if  you  mean  me — I  am  old,  old,  old!" 
Josephine  did  look  a  little  withered  and  tired 
for  the  moment. 

This  was  a  Sunday  afternoon  near  the  end 
of  December.  She  had  dropped  in  to  dine  with 
Katharine  as  was  her  wont  on  Sundays.  It  was 
the  habit  of  the  "  boys,"  as  they  called  the  Amer 
ican  art  students,  to  call  for  them  later  on  in  the 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE  IIJ 

afternoon  and  take  them  for  long  walks  or  to 
the  picture  galleries. 

"Miss  Josephine  looks  like  a  dove  to-day," 
remarked  the  tall  Johnson  to  Katharine  as  they 
strolled  through  the  Boboli  Gardens. 

"A  dove?"  said  Katharine,  questioningly. 
She  was  apt  to  see  things  in  an  ethical  light,  and 
it  was  not  without  an  effort  that  she  disassoci 
ated  looking  and  being. 

"Yes.  You  see  she  has  on  all  the  colours, 
graded  from  gray  to  soft  fawn,  and  capped  by 
that  iridescent  thing  round  her  neck.  Her 
head  moves  above  it  just  like  a  dove's  head." 

"Methinks  it  is  a  cat,"  said  Steinway,  who 
prided  himself  on  being  rude. 

Katharine,  who  was  loyal,  resented  this.  "I. 
wonder,"  said  she,  "how  any  one  dares  to  speak 
of  a  woman  as  if  she  were  a  piece  of  bric-a-brac, 
a  picture  or  an  animal?" 

"Oh,  now,  Miss  Dunning,  don't  be  too  hard. 
We  fellows  don't  mean  anything,  you  know. 
It  is  only  so-called  artistic  slang." 

"And  really,"  joined  in  Anderson,  "it  is 
curious,  Miss  Katharine,  but  one  does  get  to 
looking  even  at  one's  friends  as  if  they  were 
posing.  Just  see  Miss  Josephine  now— how 
she  flattens  out  into  a  fresco  against  that  white 
wall  in  full  sunlight.  Why,  if  I  painted  her  so, 
the  donkeys  who  write  art  criticisms  would  say 
I  had  filched  from  the  old  frescoes.  But 


Il8  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

wouldn't  it  make  a  sensation  in  the  Salon  if  I 
could  only  hit  it  off?"  Anderson  was  young. 

"Do  you  know,"  drawled  Spellman  to  Kath 
arine,  "  when  Miss  Bromley  sings  with  her  guitar, 
Spanish  fashion,  I  regularly  fall  deeply  in  love 
with — someone  else!" 

"I  wonder  who?"  thought  Katharine.  She 
only  said,  "Let  us  walk  faster,  please."  That 
was  almost  the  only  time  she  did  not  know  ex 
actly  what  she  wanted. 

Bragdon,  "the  Baltimore  Oriole"  as  he  was 
popularly  called  (he  was  very  dashing,  and  in 
clined  to  a  bit  of  flame  colour  in  his  cravat)  was 
walking  with  Josephine,  and  saying  impres 
sively:  "I  don't  know  what  I  shall  do  for  the 
dramatic  element  when  you  go  away  from  here. 
It  will  cost  us  fellows  a  heap  of  money  for 
theatre  tickets  to  keep  us  amused  then,  and 
it  won't  be  half  so  artistic." 

"You  can  go  to  church  for  nothing,"  said  the 
dove  with  serenity. 

Soon  after  this  Sunday,  Maggie,  Josephine's 
sister,  came  in  for  a  long  talk  with  Katharine. 
She  had  been  so  busy  with  all  the  shopping  and 
the  making  up  of  Josephine's  wardrobe  that  she 
was  brimming  over  with  bottled-up  emotions. 
Besides  that,  nobody  who  knew  Katharine  ever 
considered  any  undertaking  fully  begun  or  done 
without  having  had  it  out  with  her. 

"You  never  in  all  your  life  knew  any  one  so 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

utterly  generous  as  Josephine  is,"  began  Mag 
gie,  "and  what  do  you  think  she  has  just  done? 
She  says  she  shall  have  money  enough  after  her 
marriage,  so  she  has  not  only  made  over  to  me 
her  half  of  the  farm  down  in  Kennebunk,  but 
she  has  actually  sent  over  to  the  savings  bank 
and  drawn  out  all  her  money,  and  has  given 
me  five  hundred  dollars.  She  won't  have  a 
cent  left  after  she  has  paid  for  all  her  dresses 
and  for  all  those  queer  things  she  dotes  on  so 
much.  I  tell  her  she  is  no  Christian,  but  a  per 
fect  heathen  in  her  tastes.  She  only  laughs — 
she  does  nothing  but  laugh  and  sing  nowadays. 
Why,  Katharine,  the  brass  things  alone  that 
she  has  bought  would  fill  a  ship,  I  should  think; 
and  they  smell  so  brassy.  Besides  that,  she  has 
bought  a  lot  of  inlaid  chairs  and  tables  and 
things.  I  really  don't  know  as  I  ought  to  tell 
you,  if  she  hasn't  already;  but  you  know  all 
about  that  Italian  count  who  wanted  to  marry 
her?  Well,  he  failed  (he  was  a  gambler,  isn't  it 
awful?)  he  failed,  and  then  shot  himself;  and 
now  Josephine  has  gone  and  bought  up  most  of 
his  old  furniture  at  auction  or  of  some  dealer. 
She  says  that  it  has  a  sentiment  for  her,  and 
that  she  is  so  grateful  to  have  had  the  dance 
without  paying  the  piper.  I  never  half  under 
stand  her,  and  I  can't  imagine  how  we  ever 
came  to  be  born  in  the  same  family.  But  you 
must  come  over  and  see  Josephine's  clothes. 


I2O  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

Every  dress  is  copied  from  some  old  picture 
and  she  has  no  end  of  old  beads  and  jewellery. 
I  feel  as  if  I  were  living  in  a  dream.  I  almost 
dread  to  wake  up.  And  to  think  in  a  month  it 
will  be  all  over!" 

"I  should  suppose  Mr.  Griffith  would  re 
member  that  you,  too,  are  the  daughter  of  his 
old  friend." 

"Yes,"  assented  Maggie,  vaguely,  "but  it 
isn't  as  if  he  had  seen  me." 

"To  be  candid  with  you,  Maggie"  (as  if  given 
half  a  chance,  Katharine  could  ever  have  been 
anything  but  candid),  "what  puzzles  me  is  that 
Mr.  Griffith  dared  to  think  of  marrying  so 
young  a  girl  as  Josephine.  And  if  he  wanted 
to,  why  didn't  he  come  down  to  Florence  and 
get  acquainted  with  her  first?  He  must  be 
nearly  twice  as  old  as  she." 

"Do  you  know,  Katharine,  it  seems  queer 
to  me  but  he  doesn't  look  so  very  old.  I  know 
he  must  be,  he  can't  be  as  young  as  he  looks. 
I've  been  over  it  again  and  again  in  my  mind 
and  he  can't  be  less  than  sixty,  but  he  doesn't 
look  thirty-five." 

"Oh,  you've  seen  him  then?"  Katharine  had 
a  momentary  sense  of  relief,  immediately  fol 
lowed,  however,  by  an  uncomfortable  feeling 
that  at  last  Josephine  was  caught  in  a  fib,  for  she 
certainly  had  said  several  times  that  Maggie 
had  not  seen  Mr.  Griffith. 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE  121 

Maggie  hurried  to  say,  "No,  I  haven't  seen 
him  but  Josephine  has  his  photograph  on  her 
dressing  table.  She  puts  fresh  violets  before 
it  every  day.  His  picture  does  not  look  old. 
Josephine  is  twenty-three,  you  know,  and  I  am 
twenty-seven,  and  mother  would  have  been 
fifty-seven  if  she  had  lived."  Maggie  knew  to  a 
day  just  how  old  everybody  was,  that  was  her 
strong  point — almost  her  only  one.  "Now  if 
mother  would  have  been  fifty-seven,  he  must 
be  older7,  but  he  doesn't  look  anything  like  it. 
He  is  handsome,  too." 

A  thousand  little  doubts  were  assailing 
Katharine,  each  one  so  small  that  it  took  a 
whole  swarm  of  them  to  make  a  cloud  thick 
enough  to  be  palpable;  but  the  cloud  was  getting 
somehow  like  a  gray  mist  before  her  mind's  eye. 

"Miss  Bromley  has  an  aptitude  for  her  future 
role  of  great  lady,"  said  Spellman  to  Katharine 
one  day.  "Do  you  know  what  she  has  just 
done?  She  has  bought  Bragdon's  'Arno  by 
Moonlight,'  and  he  is  so  grateful  he  cannot 
speak  of  it  without — well,  doing  what,  if  he  were 
a  girl,  we  should  call  crying;  and  he  is  the  most 
undemonstrative  fellow  in  the  world.  He  means 
to  stay  here  for  three  more  months  of  study. 
It  will  be  the  making  of  him." 

"Good  Lord!"  said  Katharine  under  her 
breath.  All  at  once  she  had  a  vision  of  Jose 
phine  as  she  had  appeared  that  night  when  she 


122  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

came  in  wet,  nervous,  and  wilful,  and  announced 
her  engagement  to  Mr.  Griffith,  while  she 
twanged  on  her  guitar,  her  shabby  gown  drip 
ping  with  rain;  and  now,  only  a  few  weeks  later, 
she  was  buying  pictures,  playing  fairy  god 
mother  to  Bragdon. 

Katharine's  face  was  a  study.  Spellman 
answered  what  he  thought  he  read  in  it,  and 
said,  "Oh,  she's  all  right.  She  is  going  to  marry 
money,  isn't  she?  I  don't  mean,  of  course, 
marrying  for  money.  Marrying  money  and 
marrying  for  money  are  very  different  things." 

"Yes,  it's  different  from  marrying  for  money," 
assented  Katharine,  gravely. 

All  the  same,  that  night  she  took  out  her 
bank  book,  and  made  a  long  and  careful  com 
putation.  "For,"  said  she,  aloud,  as  good 
people  will  who  live  much  alone,  and  whose  im 
aginations  need  the  reinforcement  of  words, 
"for,  as  sure  as  guns,  I  shall  have  to  use  some 
of  it  soon,  for  friendship's  sake.  I  feel  shaky 
about  Josephine.  I  can't  help  it — I  feel  very 
shaky." 

PART    THREE 

Josephine  was  ready  to  be  married — gowns, 
brass  kettles,  Madonnas,  and  all.  She  looked 
a  trifle  worn,  but  she  was  in  the  gayest  of  spirits 
and  more  full  than  ever  of  her  vagaries.  She 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

was  either  exasperatingly  gentle  after  doing  the 
most  reprehensible  things,  or  else  sweetly  con 
trary,  always  being  of  the  opposite  mood, 
whatever  was  expected.  She  gave  teas  and 
lunches  at  her  rooms,  where  her  new  artistic 
belongings  created  the  impression  of  the  fif 
teenth  century  having  kaleidoscoped  with  the 
nineteenth. 

Every  day  she  had  some  new  and  grotesquely 
inappropriate  possession  to  exploit,  ofttimes 
bemoaning  her  inability  to  buy  the  little  iron 
devil  that  presided  over  the  market  place,  alas, 
that  it  was  not  for  sale.  "That  alone,"  she  de 
clared,  "would  be  worth  more  to  her  than  all 
her  Madonnas." 

Josephine  was  quite  the  sensation  of  Florence 
at  this  time  and  it  agreed  wonderfully  well  with 
her. 

One  night  Katharine  was  summoned  sud 
denly  by  a  wide-eyed  Italian  maid,  with  more 
emotion  than  power  of  speech.  She  brought 
a  slip  of  paper  from  Josephine's  sister  Maggie, 
saying,  "Come  at  once;  Josephine  is  very  ill." 
More  than  this  could  not  be  gathered  from  the 
maid,  whose  Neapolitan  dialect  was  beyond  the 
range  of  Katharine's  studies. 

Maggie  stood  shivering  by  the  door  when 
they  reached  her  apartment.  She  was  haggard 
with  distress.  "Mr.  Griffith  is  dead,"  said  she, 
"and  I  think  Josephine  will  die,  too.  What 


124  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

shall  I  do?  She  had  a  letter  this  afternoon 
from  his  sister  in  London.  He  died  suddenly. 
Oh,  Katharine,  this  is  the  awakening.  Jose 
phine  is  almost  crazy.  She  fainted  away  when 
she  read  the  letter.  She  had  been  restless  and 
excited  all  day  as  if  she  felt  that  something  was 
going  to  happen;  and  she  dropped  down  in  a 
heap  on  the  floor  with  the  letter  in  her  hand. 
Afterward  she  laughed  and  cried  horribly.  I 
was  afraid  of  her.  I  sent  for  the  doctor  and 
he  couldn't  do  anything  with  her  till  he  gave  her 
something  to  put  her  to  sleep;  and  even  now 
she  starts  and  calls  out.  I  know  she  will  die. 
What  shall  I  do?"  And  poor  Maggie  laid  her 
head  on  Katharine's  shoulder  and  had  the  first 
cry  that  she  had  found  time  for  since  the  news 
had  come. 

While  Katharine  tried  to  comfort  her,  she 
herself  was  going  through  a  certain  self- 
chastisement.  She  was  blaming  herself  for 
not  feeling  the  grief  of  the  circumstances  more 
sympathetically,  more  spontaneously.  She  was 
sorry  enough  for  the  sobbing  Maggie,  but  there 
was  not  that  whole-souled  oneness  in  her  sym 
pathy  for  the  two  desolated  sisters  that  she 
felt  there  ought  to  be.  "I  wonder,"  she  thought, 
"if  I  have  been  orderly  and  methodical  so  long 
that  I  have  left  no  room  for  the  expansions  of 
pity."  And  worse  than  the  distrust  of  her  ca 
pacity  for  sympathy  was  the  black  swarm  of 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE  125 

doubts  which  had  increased  so  that  they  made 
a  cloud  in  her  brain  through  which  Josephine 
and  her  dramatic  troubles  looked  farcical  and 
unreal.  She  seemed  to  see  herself  going  through 
some  grotesque  drama  at  the  bottom  of  which 
there  was  no  reality. 

To  Maggie,  however,  there  was  no  unreality, 
either  in  Josephine's  illness,  called  by  the  doctor 
a  "nervous  collapse,"  or  in  their  financial  posi 
tion.  The  five  hundred  dollars  so  generously 
bestowed  upon  her  by  Josephine  had  long  ago 
melted  down  to  less  than  a  third;  and  in  the 
days  that  followed  the  remaining  portion 
melted  like  the  snow  on  Monte  Morello. 

Life  was  very  real  to  Maggie.  Josephine's 
health  mended  slowly  and  their  finances  not  at 
all.  Doctor's  bills,  tradesmen's  bills,  and  all 
the  little  luxuries  of  sickness  sucked  their 
slender  stream  dry.  One  new  expense,  as 
Josephine  recovered,  threatened  to  bring  them 
to  utter  and  irretrievable  ruin.  Josephine  was 
obliged  to  be  out  for  hours  driving  in  the  Cascine 
where,  wrapped  in  her  gray  rabbit's-fur  cloak, 
with  roses  tucked  in  near  her  pale  face,  she  re 
ceived  the  admiring  pity  of  the  voluble  Italians 
who  had  followed  in  every  detail  the  poor 
signorina's  drama. 

It  was  now  March,  and  Katharine  came  to  a 
decision.  Action  followed  always  immediately 
on  her  decisions.  She  spent  several  hours  in 


126  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

writing  a  letter.  This  letter  was  addressed  to 
Mr.  J.  C.  Griffith.  After  writing  it  she  en 
closed  it  in  another  carefully  worded  letter  to 
her  bankers  in  London,  asking  them  to  forward 
it  to  Mr.  J.  C.  Griffith,  if  it  were  possible  to  ob 
tain  that  gentleman's  address,  also  asking  them 
as  a  favour  to  write  a  letter  to  him  themselves 
introducing  her,  as  she  was  consulting  him  on  a 
matter  of  importance,  but  had  not  the  honour 
of  an  acquaintance  with  him. 

She  received  a  letter  in  reply  from  her  bankers 
stating  that  they  had  delivered  the  letter  to 
J.  C.  Griffith,  Esq.,  who  happened  to  be  well 
known  to  them,  having  been  for  many  years  a 
customer  of  theirs,  so  that  there  was  no  delay 
in  transmitting  the  letter,  with  one  of  introduc 
tion  as  requested. 

Then  Katharine  waited;  and  while  she  waited 
she  tided  over  the  affairs  of  the  two  sisters  in  her 
usual  orderly,  methodical,  and  practical  manner, 
but  she  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  tell  them 
that  she  had  written  to  J.  C.  Griffith,  Esq.,  and 
that  she  awaited  with  deep  interest  a  letter  from 
him.  Occasionally  she  thanked  Heaven  de 
voutly  that  she  knew  what  she  wanted,  and  was 
practical  enough  to  get  it. 

Her  letter  to  Mr.  Griffith  had  been  a  plain 
and  full  statement  of  the  affairs  of  the  two 
Bromley  sisters,  including  all  she  knew  of 
Josephine's  engagement.  She  began  by  asking  if 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

the  Mr.  Griffith  she  was  now  addressing  was  the 
Mr.  J.  C.  Griffith  who  had  formerly  been  a  friend 
of  Mrs.  Bromley  in  America,  saying:  "If  you 
are  that  friend,  the  following  circumstances  are 
of  importance  to  you.  Assuming  that  you  are, 
I  will  give  them  to  you  as  I  see  them,  and  I  hope 
that  you  may  help  me  in  my  efforts  to  send  the 
two  daughters  back  to  America."  She  told 
him  that  early  in  the  winter  Josephine  had  an 
nounced  her  engagement  to  a  Mr.  J.  C.  Griffith, 
an  old  friend  of  her  mother's,  and  that  several 
weeks  had  been  passed  in  preparing  for  the  mar 
riage;  also  that  all  the  fortune  of  the  two  girls 
had  been  spent.  She  explained  to  him  that  in 
some  adroit  manner,  either  by  accident  or  design, 
no  one  but  Josephine  had  ever  seen  Mr.  Griffith, 
and  the  engagement  had  ostensibly  been  ar 
ranged  by  letter;  and  that  this  engagement 
had  been  suddenly  and  shockingly  broken  off 
by  the  news  of  Mr.  Griffith's  death,  communi 
cated  to  Josephine  by  the  sister  of  the  man,  also 
by  letter.  She  went  on  to  tell  him  how  ill  Jose 
phine  had  been  and  still  was,  and  ended  by 
saying:  "The  whole  affair  is  to  me  a  matter  of 
confusion  and  I  frankly  say,  of  mystery.  It  is, 
however,  borne  in  upon  me  that  the  Mr.  Griffith 
to  whom  Josephine  was  or  was  supposed  to  be 
engaged  was  not  the  old  friend  of  her  mother's 
and,  acting  on  that  impression,  I  write  and  put 
the  matter  in  your  hands.  If  you  are  that 


128  A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE 

friend,  will  you  aid  the  daughters  on  their  way 
to  America?  And  may  I  let  you  know  when 
they  pass  through  London?  As  to  what  you 
may  think  it  is  your  duty  to  do  in  unravelling 
the  mystery  that  surrounds  the  use  of  your 
name  in  the  tragedy  of  Josephine's  life,  that  is  a 
matter  outside  of  my  power  to  suggest.  I  need 
not  tell  you  that  they  do  not  know  of  my  in 
tercession  with  you  on  their  behalf.  On  the  re 
ceipt  of  your  answer  to  this,  I  shall  do  as  circum 
stances  dictate  in  the  matter  of  making  known 
to  them  how  I  came  to  communicate  with  you." 

One  day  a  letter  came  to  Katharine  from  J.  C. 
Griffith.  He  avowed  himself  to  be  the  one  who 
had  been  honoured  as  the  friend  of  Mrs. 
Bromley,  "the  most  beautiful  and  fascinating 
woman  I  ever  met  or  expect  to  meet."  He  said 
that  he  remembered  Josephine  as  giving  promise 
to  be  much  like  her  mother,  and  that  nothing  in 
the  world  could  exceed  his  delight  in  putting 
himself  at  their  (he  had  first  written  "her"  and 
then  substituted  "their")  service.  He  added: 
"Miss  Josephine  inspires  me  with  great  interest. 
In  her,  evidently,  a  trace  of  the  mother  lives, 
even  in  the  aptitude  of  her  feet  for  somewhat 
tangled  paths.  I  am  proud  to  be  of  service  to 
her." 

"Good  gracious,"  said  Katharine.  "I've 
fixed  it  now.  The  old  fool  will  marry  Josephine 
as  sure  as  my  name  is  Katharine  Dunning." 


A    GAME    OF    SOLITAIRE  129 

And  he  did  marry  Josephine  Bromley  in  just 
three  months  after  he  met  her  in  London. 

It  was  a  long  time  before  Katharine  could 
make  herself  write  to  Josephine  after  receiving 
an  erratic  little  note  from  her  announcing  her 
happy  engagement  to  Mr.  J.  C.  Griffith,  without 
a  single  reference  to  the  past,  or  a  single  explana 
tion  of  who  this  Mr.  Griffith  was.  And  when 
Katharine  did  write,  it  could  hardly  be  called 
a  congratulatory  letter.  In  fact,  it  read: 

Josephine  Bromley,  will  you  tell  me  whose  photograph 
you  had  standing  on  your  dressing  table  here  in  Florence, 
framed  in  old  ivory  and  silver,  before  which  you  put  fresh 
violets  every  day? 

And  Josephine  answered  by  return  mail: 

Why,  Katharine,  you  dear  old  thing,  that  was  only  a 
card  that  I  used  in  my  game  of  solitaire. 

Yours, 
JOSEPHINE  BROMLEY  GRIFFITH. 


THE  HOUSE  THAT  STEPHEN  BUILT 

WELL!  What  did  I  tell  you!  Isn't 
this  a  pretty  state  of  things  ?  Stephen 
living  in  rooms,  and  Stephen's  house 
just  teeming  with  those  Swedes.  I  declare! 
It  makes  me  ill;  I  do  believe  that  Stephen  ought 
to  be  put  under  guardianship,  I  do  really — 
you're  laughing,  Eugenia;  I  suppose  it  is  all 
very  amusing  to  any  one  that  isn't  anything  in 
particular  to  Stephen;  but  I  tell  you,  Eugenia, 
if  he  were  anything  to  you  you  would  see  the 
utter  ridiculousness  of  the  whole  thing,  instead 
of  standing  there  and  laughing." 

"That  is  why  I  laugh,  it  is  so  very  ridiculous, 
and  so  like  Stephen." 

."I  call  Stephen  odd,  I  don't  say  that  he  is 
ridiculous.  He  is  a  victim  of  circumstances, 
and  it  is  these  circumstances  that  are  absurd 
and  ridiculous." 

The  eyes  of  the  two  women  met  and  they  both 
laughed,  one  in  irritation  and  one  in  a  sympa 
thetic  manner  which  soon  ended  in  a  wistful 
silence,  while  the  other  wiped  from  her  eyes  the 
half-angry  tears. 

"Now,  just  look  over  there,"  said  the  irri- 
131 


THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

tated  woman.  "Isn't  that  house  a  beauty?  It 
is  a  home  from  top  to  cellar,  it  isn't  merely 
a  house.  Stephen  planned  every  detail;  he 
put  his  heart  into  it,  it  is  a  perfect  home." 

"It  certainly  seems  to  be  a  home,"  assented 
Eugenia,  "that  is  if  a  lot  of  happy  people  living 
in  it  makes  a  home  of  it.  I  have  seen  enough 
mothers  and  aunts,  and  fathers  and  sisters  and 
brothers  and  children  over  there  to  constitute 
a  fair-sized  Republic  made  up  of  families.  For 
my  part  I  like  a  full  house." 

"So  do  I,  if  they  are  the  right  people  in  the 
right  place.  When  Stephen  told  me  two  years 
ago  that  he  was  going  to  build,  I  thought  that 
he  was  doing  the  most  sensible  thing  of  his  life. 
He  just  beamed  when  I  said  that,  and  intimated 
that  he  had  expected  me  to  object;  I  said  that  I 
never  objected  to  his  doing  a  sensible  thing  like 
this,  but  that  it  was  the  unexpectedly  queer 
things  that  he  was  always  doing  that  had  made 
me  acquire  the  objecting  habit,  and  then  as  the 
Yankee  said,  'He  didn't  say  nothing  and  I  didn't 
say  nothing,  and  so  one  word  led  to  another,' 
and  then  Stephen  fell  into  one  of  his  silent 
tempers,  and  for  a  week  we  were  conspicuously 
polite  to  each  other,  but  we  didn't  allude  to  the 
house.  When  he  got  over  his  miff  he  brought  up 
the  subject  again,  and  I  was  perfectly  amazed 
to  find  that  he  did  not  in  the  least  mean  to  get 
married,  as  I  had  supposed  of  course  he  would, 


THE    HOUSE   THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     133 

but  that  he  was  just  going  to  build.  'A  home/ 
he  called  it,  'a  hollow  mockery,'  I  said,  and  after 
that  I  systematically  objected  to  every  brick 
and  every  stone  that  went  to  the  building  of  the 
house.  I  criticised  everything  that  he  planned 
to  do,  right  along,  till  the  house  was  done.  He 
told  my  husband  that  it  ought  to  be  a  thor 
oughly  well-built  house  as  it  had  had  all  the 
benefits  of  contractor  and  detractor.  I  know 
that  I  did  my  part  well,  anyway.  I  suppose  I 
am  somewhat  to  blame  and  that  I  really  drove 
him  into  it.  Opposition  is  always  the  best 
goad — for  a  man.  Anyway,  there  it  stands, 
'Stephen's  Folly." 

There  was  stillness  for  a  time,  and  then  the 
older  woman  continued,  as  if  driven  to  speak 
against  a  restraining,  better  judgment:  "Some 
times  in  my  heart  of  hearts  I  think  of  it  as 
Stephen's  and  Eugenia's  Folly.  Perhaps  I  am 
wrong  there." 

Eugenia  was  not  to  be  decoyed  into  admission 
or  discussion.  She  stood  surveying  the  opposite 
house  with  interest. 

There  was  evidently  some  sort  of  gala  doings 
over  there:  an  awning  was  stretched  from  door 
to  pavement;  a  man  in  livery  was  placing  stones 
on  the  corners  of  the  carpet  that  made  an  invit 
ing  line  of  red,  running  up  the  steps. 

The  wind  flapped  the  striped  and  scalloped 
awning  which  gave  to  the  scene  a  triumphal, 


134    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

flag-flying  effect,  while  two  strictly  trimmed 
box  trees  in  pots  stood  in  formal  promise  of  a 
function  of  importance  within. 

Showy,  light  costumes  containing  conscious- 
looking  women  stepped  from  the  carriages 
"which  continually  do  come,"  chronicled 
Eugenia  for  the  benefit  of  the  other,  whose  in 
terest  was  of  too  irritable  a  nature  to  allow  of  her 
watching  for  herself. 

"They  all  come  in  carriages,  I  often  walk," 
remarked  Eugenia,  meditatively. 

"You  can  afford  to  walk." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so.  One  would  naturally 
have  to  ride  to  one's  own  wedding,  and  to 
one's  own  funeral,  all  the  other  rides  are 
extra." 

"I  should  say  that  those  Swedes  over  there 
lived  mostly  on  extras." 

"Whose  wedding  is  this,  anyway?"  asked 
Eugenia.  "I  suppose  it  is  the  pretty  white- 
haired  girl  that  is  to  be  married,  the  one  that 
watched  us  from  the  upper  window  when  we 
got  out  of  the  carriage  day  before  yesterday." 

"I  saw  at  least  six  heads  at  the  various  win 
dows.  It  might  be  any  one  of  the  aunts  or  sis 
ters  or  cousins  or  friends  of  the  family,  I  am  sure 
I  don't  know  which  one;  don't  ask  me  anything, 
my  head  is  bursting  with  a  racking  headache, 
and  it  all  comes  from  the  idiocy  of  you  two,  it 
really  does,  Eugenia,  and  it  is  of  no  use  for  you 


THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     135 

to  deny  it,  and  to  look  so  cool  and  remote,  and  so 
innocent." 

As  she  said  this  Mrs.  Ransome  put  her  head 
on  one  side  and  surveyed  Eugenia  like  an  in 
quisitive  robin,  to  see  how  she  would  receive 
the  arrangement. 

As  Eugenia  kept  silence  she  added,  "Did 
you  know  that  when  Stephen  was  eight  years 
old  he  nearly  had  the  honour  of  playing  the 
leading  part  in  a  drama  that  they  gave  at  his 
school,  at  the  closing  of  the  spring  term?" 

Eugenia  smiled  at  the  digression  and  said  that 
she  probably  had  heard  of  it  but  that  she  had  for 
gotten  it,  as  she  had  unfortunately  forgotten 
many  historical  events  of  interest  that  ought  to 
be  remembered. 

"Yes,"  went  on  Mrs.  Ransome,  not  at  all  dis 
couraged  by  her  listener's  small  ironies.  "Yes, 
he  was  appointed  for  a  part  and  learned  his 
lines,  and  got  his  make-up,  and  was  as  import 
ant  as  if  he  was  to  play  Hamlet  at  Drury  Lane, 
and  then — are  you  listening,  Eugenia?" 

"Of  course  I  am,  I  am  very  much  interested  to 
find  out  how  you  got  switched  off  from  the 
Swedish  wedding  to  Stephen  at  school,  in  Ham 
let  did  you  say,  at  the  age  of  eight?  Well?" 

"Well,  it  has  a  bearing  on  this  and  on  many 
other  things;  the  very  day  that  the  play  was  to 
come  off  Stephen  came  down  with  the  measles, 
his  face  was  as  red  as  his  hair,  and  one  could  not 


Ij       THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

say  more  at  that  time.  Maybe  his  hair  is  a 
trifle  darker  now.  Yes,  he  took  that  very  day 
of  all  others  to  begin  on  his  measles." 

"Poor  little  boy!"  murmured  Eugenia. 

"Horrid  little  boy,  I  say.  The  fact  is  that 
Stephen  never  had  in  all  his  life  the  first  glim 
mering  of  what  we  call  social  instinct;  now  if  I 
am  to  have  an  honour  or  a  pleasure  do  I  take 
that  particular  time  to  have  any  one  of  the 
regular  diseases  that  could  be  had  at  any  time, 
at  one's  own  convenience,  as  it  were?  I  tell  you, 
Eugenia,  these  things  are  not  accidental,  they 
are  temperamental.  You  don't  find  that  any 
successful  person,  socially  speaking,  has  dis 
agreeable  things  at  critical  moments.  A  man, 
for  instance,  would  not  have  a  fit  of  sneezing 
just  at  the  instant  that  he  was  going  to  propose 
to  the  woman  he  loved  above  anything  on  earth, 
that  is,  no  one  but  Stephen  would.  Stephen 
might,  I  am  not  sure  about  anything's  not  hap 
pening  to  Stephen,  he  would  be  sure  to  have 
something  frustrating  anyway." 

Eugenia  smiled  and  the  colour  came  slowly 
up  till  her  ears  burned.  She  recalled  that  in 
truth  every  event  in  the  life  of  Mrs.  Ransome 
had  somehow  fallen  at  the  opportune  moment, 
and  at  the  same  time  she  remembered  guiltily 
in  her  own  case  how  some  indiscretions,  some 
inopportunities,  had  frustrated  or  impeded  her 
at  moments  of  social  importance,  but  her  admi- 


THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     137 

ration  for  Mrs.  Ransome's  superior  quality  was 
mixed  with  a  sneaking  sympathy  for  the  little 
red-headed  boy  that  was  devoid  of  the  social 
instinct. 

"And  then,"  resumed  Stephen's  sister,  re 
hearsing  her  grievances  in  a  way  that  showed 
them  to  have  been  reduced  to  order  and  sequence 
in  her  mind,  "and  then  again,  when  he  was  to 
be  graduated  from  college  at  twenty,  he  had 
some  part  in  the  exercises — quite  an  honourable 
part,  for  Stephen  in  the  long  run  is  generally 
successful — what  did  he  do  but  lie  awake  all  the 
night  before  and  then  go  off  early  in  the  morning 
for  a  long  walk  to  clear  his  mind,  and  then  he 
fell  asleep  in  the  woods  and  slept  till  the  whole 
thing  was  over.  That  is  the  fact,  he  is  subject 
to  some  fate,  some  malignant,  obscuring  fate 
that  always  succeeds  in  making  him  ineffective. 

"It  has  been  so  his  whole  life," said  she, taking 
fresh  breath,  for  she  felt  that  she  was  venturing 
on  to  thin  ice  and  she  went  at  it  with  a  rush  to 
have  it  over  with,  "and  I  haven't  the  slightest 
doubt  in  the  world  but  that  he  would  have  been 
married  long  ago  if  some  miserable,  little,  in 
convenient,  obstructing  fate  hadn't  come  in  to 
frustrate  it. 

"You  are  laughing  again,  Eugenia,  you  really 
are!  No?  Then  you  are  crying.  Oh,  don't  cry, 
dear,  I  didn't  think  you  cared—  What?  You 
don't  care?  Well!  Why  do  you  show  tears, 


138    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

then?  I  wasn't  blaming  Stephen,  1  was  just 
trying  to  explain  to  myself  how  it  happens  that 
Stephen  is  so  ineffective,  and  how  it  happens 
that  those  Swedes  have  possession  over  there 
and  Stephen  is  living  all  alone  in  some  little 
cooped-up  rooms,  Heaven  knows  how  or 
where. 

"There,  Eugenia,  I  know  you  don't  care — 
you  say  you  do  care?  Well,  I  thought  so,  at 
least  I  hoped  so,  I— 

"I  mean,"  explained  Eugenia,  resolutely,  "I 
mean  that  of  course  I  do  care  about  Stephen, 
only  as  a  friend  of  course.  But  I  can't  help 
thinking  about  that  little  red-headed  boy,  he 
must  have  been  so  terribly  disappointed,  you 
know.  I  mean  about  the  school,  about  Hamlet, 
you  know." 

"Yes,  I  think  he  was  disappointed,  Eugenia, 
and  so  far  as  I  can  make  out  he  is  just  about  as 
red-headed  and  as  disappointed  now  as  he 
was  that  day;  and  yet  I  can  really  and  truly  say 
that  I  am  glad  that  you  do  not  care  for  him, 
much  as  I  love  you  both.  I  am  very  unselfish 
about  it,  and  you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  you 
are  the  only  woman  that  Stephen  ever  cared  a 
straw  for,  and  yet  if  he  ever  tried  to  tell  you  so," 
said  Mrs.  Ransome  in  the  perfectly  measured 
and  distinct  manner  that  she  always  fell  into 
when  she  was  going  to  "bear  testimony,"  "if 
Stephen  ever  tried  to  declare  his  love,  some  dev- 


THE   HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     139 

ilish  thing  would  happen  to  break  him  all  up; 
it  would  be  bound  to  happen.  He  never  will 
try  to  tell  you,  that  is  one  comfort,  for  Stephen 
knows  his  own  limitations,  his  utter  ineffective 
ness." 

"How  can  you  say  that!"  blazed  out  Eugenia. 
"Stephen  has  done  splendid  things,  things  that 
make  you  and  me  look  like,  like " 

"Like  thirty  cents,"  interjected  Mrs.  Ran- 
some,  helpfully. 

"  Yes,  like  thirty  cents,  if  that  is  the  smallest 
thing  in  the  world." 

"Stephen  is  fine,"  admitted  his  sister,  "and 
he  is  brave;  I  suppose  you  are  thinking  of  the 
little  military  episode  in  Cuba.  That  was  a  fine 
thing,  we  were  all  of  us  proud  of  him,  but  you 
must  remember  that  he  did  not  get  the  credit 
of  even  that.  At  a  critical  moment  he  just 
went  in  at  the  risk  of  his  own  life  and  did  what 
belonged  to  another  man  to  do,  and  though  that 
other  man  was  a  coward,  to  save  that  other  man 
from  disgrace  Stephen  held  his  tongue,  and  the 
other  man  got  not  only  the  fame  but  he  got  his 
promotion.  All  this  is  very  fine,  no  doubt,  I 
admit  that,  but  ineffective  so  far  as  Stephen  is 
concerned!  A  case  of  suppressed  measles,  we 
might  call  it,  he  just  missed  the  point  as  usual — 
of  course.  Stephen  would  give  his  life  or  any 
other  little  thing  to  any  one  in  need,  except 
just  to  himself  the  neediest  one  of  all,  in  spite 


140    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

of  his  money.  Oh,  yes!  Stephen  is  all  right, 
it  is  only  that  fate  of  his." 

"I  think  that  Stephen  is  in  some  ways  the 
finest  man  I  ever  knew,"  Eugenia  announced 
with  a  candour  that  was  outspoken  but  yet  not 
entirely  incriminating. 

"Oh!  we  all  think  the  world  of  Stephen,  but 
for  all  that—  The  conclusion  was  left  to 

the  imagination  of  any  one  interested  enough 
to  fill  the  blank. 

The  wedding  march  was  heard  from  over  the 
way. 

"My  nerves  are  all  of  a  frazzle.  I  hate  that 
march,"  added  Mrs.  Ransome,  vindictively. 

Eugenia  still  watched  the  house  over  the  way; 
it  seemed  to  have  a  fascination  for  her,  the  house 
that  Stephen  had  built  and  in  which  he  now  had 
no  part  except  to  see  that  it  always  kept  the 
look  of  the  perfect  home  in  every  outside  detail. 
She  wondered  how  it  was  inside,  and  how  much 
of  his  furnishings  were  still  there,  and  if  he  was 
happy. 

Mrs.  Ransome,  Stephen's  only  sister,  had  just 
run  over  to  America  for  the  summer.  She  was 
nowadays,  as  she  said,  never  at  home  except  by 
chance,  for  business  kept  her  husband  in  London 
all  the  year  round. 

She  had  not  known  till  her  return  that 
Stephen  was  not  living  in  his  own  house,  and 
it  was  this  not  knowing  that  made  the  affair 


THE    HOUSE   THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     14! 

seem  doubly  perplexing.  Why  had  he  not  told 
her?  Why  had  he  left  her  to  hear  it  from  a 
chance  acquaintance  here  in  town  (of  near 
friends  she  had  none,  that  is  of  the  corresponding 
sort)  ?  In  these  two  days  of  waiting  to  see 
Stephen  it  had  got  on  her  nerves,  and  the  little 
dynamic  explosions  of  temper  to  which  she  had 
subjected  Eugenia  had  not  in  the  least  dimin 
ished  the  potency  of  the  reserved  force. 

Stephen,  too,  had  always  had  what  in  his  boy 
hood  were  called  red-headed  tantrums,  and 
though  his  sister's  temper  had  no  particular 
colour  scheme,  it  had  an  intensity  quite  note 
worthy. 

Two  years  before,  just  after  Stephen's  house 
had  become  an  accomplished  fact,  Mrs.  Ran- 
some,  as  subjugated  foe  to  the  scheme,  had  made 
her  peace  offering  in  the  form  of  many  pin 
cushions,  one  for  every  available  room  in  the 
house;  each  pincushion  bore  on  its  capacious 
bosom  various  kinds  of  pins  such  as  are  in  de 
mand  in  a  large  and  complex  family,  some  of 
which  were  quite  unknown  by  name  or  use  to 
Stephen,  but  he  was  innocently  charmed  at  the 
homelike  quality  they  immediately  imparted 
to  the  rooms.  If  his  sister  had  had  her  own 
peculiar  satisfaction  in  thus  stabbing  the  sym 
bolic  pincushions  with  descriptive  pins,  it  really 
was  no  more  than  her  due,  for  she  had  done  her 
duty  in  combating  the  house.  It  was  not  that 


142    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

she  had  disapproved  of  a  house,  it  was  only  a 
house  without  a  wife  and  family  that  she  so 
distinctly  combated.  It  was  the  altar  without 
the  gods,  the  offerings  that  were  so  meaningless 
without  a  something  to  sacrifice  to.  To  be  sure 
the  pincushions  had  served  their  purpose,  and 
it  was  to  be  surmised  that  not  a  pin  of  any  kind 
was  left  to-day;  the  geometric  designs  had  been 
as  fruitless  as  had  been  her  wrath. 

Stephen  came  at  this  moment,  and  the  greet 
ings  were  as  warm  between  brother  and  sister 
as  could  be  wished,  although  they  were  constitu 
tional  enemies.  Eugenia,  too,  rose  to  meet  him 
with  an  almost  tender  cordiality,  which,  how 
ever,  stiffened  into  a  formal  greeting  as  she 
noted  the  scrutiny,  involuntary  as  it  was,  on 
Mrs.  Ransome's  part.  Her  quickness  saved  her 
from  any  further  intimate  revelations  and  she 
said  with  genuine  warmth,  "I  am  so  glad  to  see 
you  and  to  have  a  chance  to  tell  you  how  proud 
we  all  were  of  you  in  Cuba.  We  heard  of  your 
bravery  and  the  best  part  of  it  all  was  the  silent 
part." 

Stephen's  eyes  were  looking  straight  into 
Eugenia's  and  he  saw  nothing  but  friendship 
there — her  friendship  he  had  always  been  sure 
of. 

Stephen  sat  down  by  the  window.  Mrs. 
Ransome  moved  her  chair  back  farther  into  the 
room — she  was  going  to  be  very  strategical. 


THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     143 

Stephen's  sittings-down  always  reminded 
Eugenia  of  the  dropping  of  a  chain,  link  by  link, 
and  now  into  her  memory  came  a  picture  of  a 
day  long  ago,  when  Stephen  had  thus  sat  down, 
and  certain  things  had  been  said  and  certain  other 
things  were  almost  said  but — well!  he  hadn't 
exactly  sneezed  at  a  crucial  moment,  as  his  sister 
had  prophesied  that  he  would  do,  but — and 
Eugenia  felt  herself  flushing.  Then  she  heard 
Mrs.  Ransome  open  the  battle  by  asking 
abruptly,  "Stephen,  where  in  the  world  are  you 
living?  I  see  your  house  is  rented." 

"I  am  in  lodgings  down  that  way,"  he  indi 
cated  the  way  vaguely  with  a  motion  of  the  head. 

"Who  lives  in  your  new  house?"  Mrs. 
Ransome  threw  the  "new  house"  at  him  like  a 
missile. 

"A  family  by  the  name  of  Hansen." 

"I  do  not  remember  the  name  among  the  old 
families  here,  are  they  new  people?" 

"Well,  no;  or  yes,  you  might  call  them  new, 
it  don't  much  matter  what  you  call  them,  they 
are  not  what  you  would  call  in  your  set." 

"Do  you  move  in  a  set  from  which  I  am  de 
barred  for  any  reason?"  This  was  asked  with 
dignity. 

"Of  course  not,  I  didn't  mean  that,  I  only 
meant  that  you  would  not  be  likely  to  meet  them 
while  you  are  here." 

That  "while  you  are  here"   was   a  mistake 


144    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

born  of  agitation,  and  his  sister  hastened  to  add: 
"I  shall  be  here  all  summer,  you  know." 

"I  meant  to  say  that 'you  would  not  meet 
them  in  the  society  you  move  in." 

"Is  there  anything  the  matter  with  them?" 

"Oh,  come  now!  Frances,  you  needn't  play 
dull.  You  understand  what  I  mean,  it  is  a 
matter  of  convention,  of  so-called  social  dis 
tinctions." 

"I  am  not  sure  that  I  do  understand.  Will 
you  call  with  me  on  these  Hansens?" 

"  But  I  do  not  call  on  them  myself,  that  is  in 
a  social  way,  our  relations  are  of  a  purely  busi 
ness  nature." 

"Dear  me!  are  they  so  bad  as  that?" 

"They  are  not  bad  at  all,  they  are  very  nice 
people,  honest,  respectable,  with  a  little  bit  of 
means,  and  altogether  thoroughly  nice." 

"What  rent  do  they  pay?" 

"Rent?  WThy,  let  me  see."  He  looked  over 
to  the  house  as  if  he  expected  to  get  a  memory- 
refreshing  placard.  Then  he  said  quietly, 
"They  do  not  pay  any  rent,  that  is  not  exactly 
in  stated  terms." 

"Not  pay  any  rent!  What  do  you  mean? 
Why  don't  you  turn  them  out?  It  is  bad  enough 
to  have  that  sort  of  people  in  your  house,  but  to 
have  them  cheat  you,  it  is  monstrous."  His 
sister  was  out  of  breath  with  indignation — she 
was  quite  overwhelming. 


THE   HOUSE   THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     145 

"Now,  Frances,  you  are  away  off,  you  must 
have  been  hearing  all  sorts  of  stuff  about  the 
house.  Just  let  me  tell  you  about  the  people, 
who  are  above  blame  in  every  way  and  only 
came  to  be  in  the  house  in  the  most  natural 
course  of  events. 

"I  had  meant  to  tell  you  all  about  it  on  our 
way  out  here,  but  my  fate  as  usual  made  me 
miss  connections  and  I  couldn't  meet  you  at  the 
wharf  or  anywhere  else.  It  was  too  bad.  I  was 
ever  so  mortified,  and  then  I  had  to  stay  over 
for  that  business  of  yours,  you  know,  Frances." 

As  he  alluded  to  his  fate,  a  glance  flashed  be 
tween  the  two  women.  Eugenia  felt  guilty  to 
have  been  a  party  to  this  interchange  and 
turned  her  face  more  directly  toward  Stephen. 

"Oh,  I  understand,  now,"  said  Mrs.  Ransome 
with  sympathy,  "there  was  not  time  for  you  to 
write  to  me  in  London,  telling  me  that  you  had 
rented  the  house;  and  your  bad  luck  prevented 
your  meeting  me  in  New  York,  and  then  you 
missed  us  at  the  wharf,  and  at  the  Waldorf,  and 
in  fact  everywhere,  and  my  tiresome  business 
kept  you  till  now.  It  was  too  bad,  because  I 
have  been  worrying  unnecessarily.  I  did  get 
the  wrong  impression  from  some  of  these  stupid 
people  here.  I  understood  them  to  say  that  you 
hadn't  lived  in  the  house  for  a  year  or  more; 
it  is  all  too  ridiculous.  I  ought  not  to  have  been 
such  an  idiot.  I  am  glad  it  isn't  so  at  all. 


146    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUJLT 

"And  these  people  have  just  moved  in?  And  the 
terms  of  rent  are  still  unsettled?  And  I  suppose 
you  are  going  abroad  or  something  and  want 
to  have  the  house  taken  care  of.  I  wish  you 
hadn't  selected  so  big  a  family.  However,  I 
dare  say  it  will  be  all  nght,  it  looks  neat  over 
there." 

All  this  was  said  in  the  sweetest  and  most  help 
ful  manner  and  she  drew  her  chair  nearer  to  his 
with  sympathetic  attention. 

She  also  laid  a  detaining  hand  on  Eugenia's 
arm  as  she  rose  to  leave  the  two  alone  together. 
"Don't  go,  dear.  You  want  to  hear  about  the 
house,  too,  especially  as  I  find  I  was  all  wrong 
in  my  criticisms. 

"And  now  tell  us  all  about  it,  Stephen." 
Stephen  crossed  his  long  legs  and  looked  obsti 
nate. 

The  day  was  very  still  except  for  the  laughter 
and  the  pervasive  mandolins  that  were  an  ac 
companiment  of  the  wedding  breakfast  over  the 
way.  The  festivities  seemed  exuberantly  in 
evidence.  There  had  been  several  weddings 
over  at  the  house,  but  it  seemed  to  Stephen 
that  never  before  had  there  been  such  aggres 
sive  hilarity;  perhaps  he  was  hearing  with  the 
ears  of  Mrs.  Ransome  and  seeing  with  the  eyes 
of  Eugenia;  though  he  could  not  make  out  to  his 
own  satisfaction  exactly  what  Eugenia  was  seeing 
with  her  grave  eyes.  She  looked  sympathetic, 


THE   HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     147 

but  then  there  was  his  sister;  maybe  she  was 
sympathetic  with  her  point  of  view. 

In  his  perturbed  state  of  mind  he  held  firmly 
to  one  thing  only,  and  that  was  that  he  must 
make  it  plain  that  the  Swedes  were  not  offend 
ers,  pushing  themselves  into  a  house  where 
they  were  not  wanted;  they  must  come  off  scot 
free.  And  to  do  that  he  must  not  lose  his 
temper,  it  was  always  so  hard  to  find  it  again; 
he  must  keep  cool,  be  explicit,  and  get  away  as 
soon  as  he  could. 

He  felt  terribly  guilty,  and  as  if  his  sister  were 
an  inimical  judge  and  Eugenia  an  utterly  non 
committal  jury. 

"After  you  went  away,  you  know,  Frances,  I 
hired  a  housekeeper.  I  hired  the  one  you  rec 
ommended  to  me.  You  remember  you  told 
me  about  Sophie  Johnson.  You  said  she  was  a 
faithful  and  capable  girl.  You  remember  Sophie, 
don't  you?" 

Stephen  smiled  winningly  at  his  sister,  her 
recommending  the  housekeeper  seemed  some 
how  to  bring  them  to  a  common  meeting-ground 
and  to  involve  Mrs.  Ransome  pleasantly  in  the 
future  events. 

"Yes,  I  remember."  Mrs.  Ransome  did  not 
seem  to  be  so  deeply  involved  as  he  had  hoped. 

"Well!  Sophie  married  Hansen,  she  is  Mrs. 
Hansen  now." 

"Oh!" 


148    THE   HOUSE   THAT   STEPHEN    BUILT 

Stephen  felt  quite  alone  again.  Then  he  ex 
plained  at  length  that  while  Sophie  had  been  his 
housekeeper,  her  sister  Ada  had  come  to  do 
second  work  while  Sophie  officiated  in  the  lower 
regions. 

Mrs.  Ransome  did  not  seem  to  care  for  in 
structions  as  to  the  division  of  duties  between 
cook  and  housemaid  and  was  aggressively  silent. 

Eugenia,  too,  was  silent,  either  because  she 
had  nothing  to  say  or  because  she,  too,  saw  that 
silence  was  a  most  discomfiting  weapon. 

"Things  went  very  smoothly  at  first,  indeed 
they  have  always  gone  smoothly,  there  hasn't 
been  any  trouble,  everything  is  all  right,  I  am 
perfectly  contented.  I  am  glad  that  I  built  the 
house.  I  like  living  as  I  do,  it  is  easier  than 
housekeeping,  though  that  was  perfectly  easy, 
too.  Sophie  managed  splendidly.  I  liked  that, 
too,  of  course. 

"But  all  this  seems  so  hard  to  express,  to 
make  you  take  my  point  of  view,  and  last  year — 
yes,  even  now,  it  seems  the  only  point  of  view, 
or  rather  I  can't  see  a  better.  It  all  seems  very 
simple,  only  you  seem,  or  the  circumstances 
seen  through  your  eyes  seem,  to  make  me  guilty 
of  something  heinous.  I  feel  guilty.  Frankly, 
now,  I  began  to  feel  guilty  the  minute  that 
you  wrote  that  you  were  coming  home  for  the 
summer. 

"  I  am  not  really  guilty  of  anything,  but  for  all 


THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     149 

that  I  feel  like  a  criminal.  I  wish,"  said  he, 
getting  up  and  then  sitting  down  again,  "I  wish 
someone  would  put  the  charge  in  words.  You 
want  to  know  how  it  comes  that  I  am  not  living 
in  the  house  that  I  built  to  live  in,  and  when  I 
try  to  tell  you  it  all  seems  so  very  complicated, 
and  it  really  is  not  complicated  at  all.  I  just 
don't  live  there  and  someone  else  does  live 
there." 

Here  he  glanced,  by  chance,  at  Eugenia,  and 
suddenly  to  him  the  jury  seemed  to  have  melted 
into  a  friend,  or  rather  the  judge  and  the  jury 
became  from  that  moment  merely  lookers  on, 
and  he  became  his  own  judge  and  his  own  jury; 
he  took  himself  before  the  bar  of  his  own  reason; 
he  arraigned  himself,  was  council,  and  made  his 
own  plea.  He  felt,  too,  that  this  time  it  was  the 
final  trial;  the  verdict  would  be  for  life. 

"You  see,"  he  said  after  a  pause  and  quite 
easily  now,  "after  a  few  weeks  in  my  perfect 
house  it  dawned  upon  me  that  it  was  very 
empty,  that  brick  remained  brick  and  that  plas 
ter  was  just  plaster,  and  that  emptiness  would 
be  emptiness  to  the  end. 

"An  old  house  is  always  full  of  memories,  they 
may  not  be  your  own  memories  but  they  are 
there;  they  fill  the  spaces,  they  speak  of  the 
human  beings  that  have  flitted  through  the 
rooms.  They  are  still  potent  though  the  people 
have  gone  away.  The  autographs  of  souls,  they 


I5O    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

may  be  called,  are  written  everywhere  and  these 
autographs  are  unfading. 

"But  a  new  house  is  an  empty  house.  It  was  in 
an  empty  house  that  I  took  my  solitary  break 
fast,  in  the  window  of  the  breakfast  room  where 
the  sun  shone  in  on  June  days  like  this,  at  just 
the  right  angle  as  I  had  so  carefully  planned. 
The  coffee  was  good,  the  rolls  superlative,  and 
the  room  was  empty. 

"I  noticed  after  a  while  that  downstairs  they 
had  for  breakfast  coffee,  ham,  sausage,  and  other 
pleasantly  odorous  things,  and,  too,  that  there 
were  voices  of  cheer  at  the  breakfast  table, 
sometimes  many  voices;  I  fancied  that  they  had 
lots  of  friends,  and  sometimes  I  distinguished 
the  voice  of  an  old  person.  Fortunately  I  could 
listen  without  hearing  what  was  said,  the  voices 
were  pleasant  in  contrast  to  my  silence  and  to 
my  thoughts. 

"I  found  after  a  time  that  the  old  Swedish 
mother  had  come  over  to  join  her  daughters  and 
that  she  was  domiciled  in  the  house.  I  was 
not  consulted  in  any  formal  manner  but  I  made 
it  plain  that  I  liked  to  have  her  there,  it  made 
the  household  arrangements  seem  more  perma 
nent. 

"  The  old  woman  and  I  became  quite  friendly; 
she  couldn't  speak  a  word  of  English  and  I  don't 
think  she  understood  any,  but  it  seemed  to  be 
enough  for  her  that  my  smile  was  a  welcome. 


THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     I  $1 

It  embarrassed  me  no  end  at  first,  because  when 
we  met  she  would  courtesy  and  then  gravely 
kiss  my  hand.  I  couldn't  have  stood  it  from 
one  so  old,  but  that  I  knew,  to  her,  it  was  only  a 
custom  of  her  country,  a  long-ago  acquired 
habit,  a  thing  of  ancestry,  not  a  personal  thing 
as  regarded  me.  Certainly  there  was  dignity 
in  the  way  she  performed  the  act.  She  had 
perhaps  a  better  acquaintance  with  her  part 
than  I  had  with  mine.  And  so  we  smiled  at 
each  other  and  if  she  played  the  role  of  one  in  a 
humbler  class  upstairs,  I  am  convinced  that  she 
was  an  autocrat  below  the  salt.  In  fact,  she  was 
so  arrogant  to  her  daughters  that  I,  in  my  mind, 
dubbed  her  the  Queen  Mother. 

"Her  children  dressed  her  well  and  I  very  surely 
knew  that  her  hands  were  never  lifted  in  any 
work.  She  reigned  in  the  idleness  of  the  upper 
class  on  the  lower  floor." 

Eugenia  had  relaxed  her  attitude,  and  a  little 
smile  played  round  her  mouth. 

"Then  the  Queen  Mother  had  a  most  tragic 
mishap;  she  fell  and  broke  her  hip.  All  her 
meals  had  to  be  carried  up  two  flights  of  stairs, 
and  on  busy  days  she  was  left  quite  alone  for 
hours.  That  troubled  me  somewhat,  especially 
as  I,  a  perfectly  able-bodied  man,  had  an  en 
tire  floor  to  myself  and  a  little  'lift'  that  com 
municated  with  the  kitchen  on  which  my  meals 
could  be  sent  up  if  I  should  be  ill. 


152    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

"I  thought  it  all  out  one  night.  It  was  very 
simple,  a  proposition  that  a  child  would  cope 
with  more  easily  than  I  had  done.  Move  my 
self  up  and  move  the  Swedes  down. 

"I  liked  upper  rooms.  I  frankly  admit  that  it 
was  not  all  generosity  on  my  part,  it  was  justice 
and  self-indulgence. 

"I  had  known  the  delights  of  an  attic  room 
in  my  boyhood  at  the  old  house  in  Salem.  To 
be  sure  I  was  no  longer  a  boy,  nor  were  the  upper 
rooms  in  any  sense  an  attic,  but  they  were  high 
up  and  I  liked  them. 

"A  very  few  alterations  made  us  all  comfort 
able,  they  on  the  middle  floor  and  I  up  higher 
with  a  little  staircase  for  myself  that  led  down 
to  the  first  floor." 

Mrs.  Ransome  sat  in  somewhat  frigid  silence. 
Eugenia  laughed  appreciatively.  He  glanced 
at  her.  "I  suppose  it  does  sound  queer,  but  if  I 
had  a  pencil,  I  could  show  you  in  a  minute  how 
cleverly  the  staircase  was  arranged  so  that  I 
could  go  down  without  passing  through  their 
hall  at  all." 

"You  gave  up  the  front  stairs  to  them,  of 
course,"  suggested  Mrs.  Ransome. 

"Giving  up  sounds  too  self-denying.  I  ceased 
to  use  them,  that  is  all.  You  see,  I  did  not  enter 
tain  after  the  first  two  months,  for  it  is  dreary 
work  entertaining  in  bachelor  fashion;  entertain 
ing  people  that  had  to  be  sorted  out  to  fit  the 


THE   HOUSE   THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     153 

artificial  standard  of  a  bachelor  home  took 
away  all  the  pleasure.  It  was  a  bore  and  I  gave 
it  up.  In  building  the  house,  the  entertaining 
of  guests  was  a  very  pleasant  anticipation,  but 
next  to  the  emptiness  of  the  house,  the  filling 
of  it  with  idle,  curious,  ill-assorted  people  was 
my  most  disappointing  experience. 

"As  for  putting  the  Swede  family  on  the  second 
floor,  there  seemed  but  one  point  of  view,  at 
least  there  seemed,  at  that  time,  but  one  sane 
point  of  view.  To-day  things  seem  less  clear — 
something  awakens  echoes  not  quite  in  keeping. 
I  dare  say  that  I  shall  again  see  things  simply, 
anyway  I  had  built  these  rooms  for  living  pur 
poses,  for  health,  and  for  sickness  in  case  of 
need. 

"The  old  Queen  Mother  seemed  to  supply  the 
human  element,  here  at  hand  was  need,  and 
here  were  the  rooms;  good!  To  be  sure  it  was 
not  my  mother  that  was  ill,  it  was  not  my  wife, 
nor  was  it  a  child  of  mine  that  needed  these 
things  that  I  had  provided,  it  was  only  a  little 
old  woman  called  the  Queen  Mother  by  a  de 
risive  whim. 

"As  I  say,  it  seemed  to  me  then  that  it  was 
hers  by  right  of  need." 

Eugenia  moved  restlessly. 

"There  were  some  evolutions  in  the  new  house 
that  had  a  humorous  side.  I  remember  wonder 
ing  at  first  with  great  amusement  what  male 


154    THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

voice  it  was  that  I  heard  at  increasingly  short 
intervals  below  stairs.  In  time  I  began  to 
believe  that  the  voice  had  come  permanently 
to  stay.  And  I  became  conscious  that  a  mas 
culine  form  came  in  and  out  of  the  kitchen  door 
with  quite  the  air  of  residence. 

"I  am  not  sure  that  I  should  not  have  resented 
this  had  it  not  gradually  dawned  upon  me 
that  Sophie  was  married.  I  do  not  know  that 
she  ever  told  me  so  at  any  one  stated  time,  but  I 
finally  learned  that  she  had  really  been  married 
quite  a  while  before  she  came  to  live  with  me 
and  that  she  had  only  gone  out  to  service  in 
order  to  get  a  little  money  to  go  to  housekeeping 
with,  and  that  the  man  expected  shortly  a  small 
inheritance  that  would  help  them  out  in  their 
plans. 

"Of  course  with  these  new  conditions  down 
stairs  the  hospitalities  were  increased.  And 
why  not!  I  was  not  in  the  mood  to  entertain 
upstairs,  Swedes  are  gregarious,  I  had  the  means 
to  pay  for  the  small  expenditure,  and  Sophie 
was  economical.  Why  should  any  one  object 
to  the  fact  that  the  dinners  were  laid  and  were 
eaten  downstairs  instead  of  upstairs?  You 
don't  know  till  you  have  tried  how  easy  it  is  to 
do  differently  from  what  the  world  expects;  the 
first  thing  is  to  ste  differently. 

"There  was,  as  I  say,  an  occasional  bit  of  hu 
mour  brought  into  my  life,  and  I  assure  you  I 


THE    HOUSE    THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT     155 

stood  in  need  of  such  small  solace  as  fell  to  my 
lot,  for  I  was  lonely. 

"For  instance,  the  voice  of  an  infant  wailing 
was  a  moment  of  excitement  and  of  humour 
I  think  that  I  blushed  a  little  also,  for  I  remem 
bered  having  at  various  times  vaguely  suggested 
to  Ada  that  there  must  be  a  kitten  in  distress 
somewhere  below.  When  I  really  accepted  the 
voice  as  that  of  another  human  document  added 
to  my  fast-accumulating  collection  (I  had  for 
gotten  to  say  that  at  various  times  various  sis 
ters  and  a  cousin  or  two  had  temporarily  lived 
in  what  was  now  known  to  me  as  "our  house"), 
it  did  not  take  me  so  long  to  discover  that  the 
infant  needed  lighter  quarters  than  it  had  down 
stairs,  though,  to  be  sure,  they  had  acquired 
by  this  time  the  use  of  the  big  dining  room  as  an 
upstairs  living  room." 

"You  may  as  well  tell  us  how  that  happened, 
it  is  all  so  very  interesting,"  said  Mrs.  Ransome. 

"Why!  it  was  only  that  the  Queen  Mother 
was,  all  her  remaining  days,  confined  to  her 
room,  and  I  offered  to  take  all  my  meals  in  the 
one  dining  room  instead  of  having  my  break 
fasts  and  luncheons  in  the  breakfast  room, 
which  would  make  the  care  of  one  less  room. 
And  then  Sophie  herself  suggested  that  the 
smaller  room,  the  breakfast  room,  was  the  sun 
nier  and  pleasanter;  Sophie  always  looked  out 
for  me.  So  I  took  that  for  dining  room.  At 


156    THE   HOUSE   THAT   STEPHEN    BUILT 

first  the  other  room  was  shut  up,  but  I  was  glad 
to  see  some  time  later  that  it  was  occupied  in 
the  evenings  by  the  family,  and  I  put  extra 
chairs  and  things  in  there  till  it  looked  about 
the  pleasantest  room  in  the  house.  The  baby 
lived  there." 

By  this  time  Stephen  was  telling  his  story 
entirely  to  Eugenia  and  she  was  wonderfully 
receptive,  smiling  or  grave  with  his  mood. 

"The  truth  is  that  when  I  looked  into  that 
room  in  passing,  I  saw  that  human  histories  were 
being  written.  It  was  not  to  remain  a  phantom 
home,  for  I  had  discovered  by  this  time  that  I, 
personally,  could  build  the  house  but  I  could 
not  create  the  house  soul — the  home. 

"But  I  had  found  a  way  to  outwit  fate.  I 
could  stand  aside  and  let  the  life  of  others  flow 
into  the  empty  spaces,  the  haunting  emptiness 
that  depressed  me. 

"You  see  that  at  bottom  it  was  selfishness,  but 
it  was  not  a  preventive  selfishness.  Life  had 
grown  round  the  things  that  I  had  provided. 
Children  have  been  born  under  the  roof.  Sis 
ters  and  cousins  have  been  married  and  gone 
out  from  there  to  build  other  homes,  and  in  time 
the  Queen  Mother  was  carried  out  of  the  front 
door  to  her  last  resting  place,  and  whether  the 
door  lent  dignity  to  the  clay  that  was  carried 
out,  or  the  clay  lent  a  final  dignity  to  the  door, 
I  have  not  been  able  to  decide.  I  do  not  know. 


THE   HOUSE   THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT    157 

But  the  round  of  human  life  had  been  enacted 
under  the  roof  and  in  time  I,  too,  flitted.  I 
went  into  lodgings  quite  large  and  dignified 
for  one  of  my  small  possibilities.  And  now  I  am 
merely  so-called  owner  of  the  house  over  ^the 
way.  I  hope  it  looks  pleasant  to  you,  Eugenia. 
I  shall  never  let  it  go  out  of  my  hands,  and 
externally  I  mean  it  to  represent  all  that  I  tried 
to  express  in  the  building." 

"Which  means,"  broke  in  the  sister,  "that 
you  pay  taxes,  you  make  repairs,  you  pay  water 
rent,  gas  bills,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  you 
furnish  fuel  and " 

"Not  all  the  fuel,  only  for  the  furnaces — be 
just,  Frances." 

"Yes,  and  you  keep  the  lawn  and  the  shrubs 
trimmed,  and  you  buy  pretty,  formal  box  and 
bay  trees  for  the  entrance,  and  you  paint  and 
repair  the  house  and  pay  wages  to  the  house 
keeper " 

"No,  not  full  wages,  she  is  on  half  wages 
now." 

At  this  Eugenia  laughed,  it  was  a  laugh  that 
was  good  to  hear,  and  Stephen  laughed  with  her. 

Mrs.  Ransome  rose.  The  door  shut  on  the 
retreating  form  of  the  diplomatic  and  joyfully 
retreating  enemy.  Then  Eugenia  rose  and 
passing  behind  Stephen's  chair  she  laid  her 
hands  over  his  eyes.  Holding  them  there  she 
said,  "Guess  whose  hands  these  are." 


If8    THE    HOUSE   THAT    STEPHEN    BUILT 

And  Stephen  answered  quite  quickly  and  cor 
rectly,  though  with  a  rising  inflection  and  much 
wonder  in  the  tone,  "Mine?" 

"If  you  still  want  them,"  said  Eugenia  with 
a  slight  tremble  in  her  tones,  and  holding  his 
eyes  very  tightly  shut. 

And  this  was  the  house  that  Stephen  built. 


IN  NETHER  SPACES 

THE  Witch  sat  rocking  her  body  back  and 
forth  while  she  crooned: 


"  I  launched  two  ships  on  a  scarlet  sea, 
One  for  thy  soul  and  one  for  me. 
Perchance  sometime  we  dead  may  be, 
And  I  fain  would  know  of  the  mystery. 
Black  Cat,  hearest  thou  me? 

"These  ships  they  tossed  on  the  blood-red  sea. 
Thy  ship  was  staunch  and  mine  sailed  free. 
The  winds  blew  shrill  and  the  night  was  dree; 
Thine  made  for  its  port;  but  mine,  ah,  me! 
Black  Cat,  come  near  to  me. 

"The  scarlet  waters  hissed  in  glee, 
While  the  shuddering,  bat-like  soul  of  me 
Went  lurching  down  to  eternity 
In  the  trough  of  the  blood-red,  crawling  sea. 
Black  Cat,  laugh  with  me!" 

Then  the  voice  of  the  Witch  and  her  cat  went 
round  the  world  in  an  unholy  shriek;  on  its  way 
it  rattled  the  shutters  of  the  sleeping  folk.  The 
child  cried,  though  it  waked  not.  The  priest 
crossed  himself.  The  nun  shivered  as  she 


l6o  IN    NETHER    SPACES 

i 

prayed.  The  wolf  growled;  his  mouth  was  wet 
with  the  longing  for  the  lamb. 

"What  was  it  that  thou  wert  singing,  dear 
Witch?" 

"That, my  dear  Cat,  was  witch-broth, afflatus, 
a  riddle." 

"Was  it  Poetry?" 

"Poetry?     No;  that  word  has  no  meaning." 

"What  does  Poetry  mean,  then?" 

"It  does  not  mean  anything.  Can't  you 
understand  that  when  something  is  something 
that  isn't  anything  else,  it  is  called  poetry;  is 
that  clear  to  thee?  Of  course,  there  had  to  be 
some  way  to  express  that  idea,  so  they  thought 
up  a  word  and  called  it  poetry." 

"Can  you  make  it,  dear  Witch?" 

"Make  it!"  she  screamed.  "He-he-he!  It 
can't  be  made;  it  grows,  it  grows  in  the  soul  of  a 
poet." 

"Oh,"  purred  the  sleepy  Cat,  "it  grow-ow- 
ow-ows,  it  grow-ow-ow — 

The  Witch  touched  him  with  her  foot. 

"Wake  up,  beauty-black;  thou  sleepest  out 
of  season;  night  was  never  made  for  sleep.  I 
would  have  thy  waking  company.  I  like  thee 
best  when  thy  green  eyes  glow  in  the  darkness. 
Wake  up,  my  beauty;  thou  art  drowsed  by  the 
sweet,  warm  breath  of  hell;  wake,  else  I  will 
transport  thee  to  a  colder  place.  All  hells  are 
not  warm." 


IN    NETHER    SPACES  l6l 

"Dear  Witch,  dost  thou  fly  to-night?  Art 
thou  going  to  ride  thy  broomstick?" 

"Truly,  soul  of  mine,  twixt  twelve  and  three 
I  shall  ride  abreast  of  the  winds  on  the  track 
of  the  lightning.  I  will  take  thee,  too,  my  sweet 
singer;  for  I  know  a  palace  where  a  prince  will 
be  born  ere  morning;  we  will  celebrate  his  com 
ing  with  a  song.  There  are  back  yards  to  pal 
aces,  aye  and  high  fences,  too,  where  thou  canst 
slink  along,  and  then,  black  as  midnight,  and 
stealthy  as  death,  thou  canst  creep  till  thou  art 
under  the  window,  then  raise  thy  voice  aloft 
in  shrill  natal  praises.  Sing  now,  flower  of  my 
heart,  that  I  may  hear  thy  voice  in  my  outer 
ear." 

The  Cat  sings,  and  from  the  world  rolling 
through  darkness  are  heard  the  echoes  of  the  song. 

"That  was  well  done,  amazingly  well  done; 
but  rest  thee  now  lest  thou  dull  the  shrill  edge 
of  thy  matchless  voice.  I  promise  thee  a  fine 
chorus  of  gray  singers  to-night.  Thou  wilt  like 
that,  my  velvet-throated  creature." 

"Not  to-night,  dear  Witch;  I  prithee  not  to 
night;  for  I,  too,  know  something  of  import. 
I  heard  thee  say  to  thyself  that  a  poet  also  was 
to  be  born  to-night,  in  a  gray  house  on  a  hill,  by 
a  wood." 

"What  then!  What  if  a  poet  be  born  also! 
May  not  a  prince  and  a  poet  hear  the  same 
song?" 


l62  IN    NETHER    SPACES 

"Nay,  I  think  the  poet,  he  who  is  to  be  a 
singer  himself,  should  hear  other  music  than 
mine." 

"And  why  not  thine,  melodious  one?" 

"Why,  I  thought  they,  the  poets,  were  chil 
dren  of- 

"Hush-sh-sh." 

"Well,  then,  are  they  not  under  the  care  of 
the  white  ones?" 

"Not  always,  no,  not  always,"  chuckled  the 
Witch.  "Not  always,  black  friend  of  mine; 
thou  jumpest  to  a  conclusion  as  thy  brethren 
on  the  earth  jump  at  a  mouse." 

"Are  poets  then,  dear  Witch,  of  thy  people?" 

"What  foolish  questions  thou  askest:  they 
are,  and  then  again  they  are  not;  but  they  are 
good  game;  yea,  rare  good  game.  I  will  tell  thee, 
then,  Black  Cat,  about  poets. 

"Poets  are  born  into  that  wonderful  border 
land  where  black  spirits  and  white  may  hunt. 
Ah,  it  is  the  keenest  sport  I  know  to  go  a-poet 
hunting.  White  wings  and  black  wings  rilling 
the  air.  The  poet  sits,  his  eyes  looking  inward; 
he  hears  the  flutter  of  wings,  black  wings  and 
white  wings,  fluttering,  fanning,  turning,  swirl 
ing.  White  wings,  black  wings,  wings  fluttering 
all  about  his  soul;  oh,  that  is  sport.  Sometimes 
it  is  a  close  game." 

The  Witch  wagged  her  head. 

"Yes,  it  is  worth  while  to  go  a-hunting  for  a 


IN    NETHER    SPACES  l6j 

poet's  soul,  and  you  can't  tell  always  in  a  poet's 
lifetime  whether  he  belongs  to  the  black  or  to 
the  white  wings." 

"Why  is  that?" 

"Well,  it  all  seems  to  lie  in  the  parentheses. 
You  see  the  recipe  for  a  poet  runs  thus: 

"Pure  light  4  parts  (flame  may  be  substituted). 

"Sense  i  part  (this  may  be  altogether  omitted). 

"Non-sense  i  part  (essential,  no  substitute). 

"Love  divine  2  parts)  (self-love  may  be  used 
>  in  whole  or  part  for 

"Love  human  i  partj        these  three  portions). 

These  be  the  nine  parts  that  go  to  the  making 
of  a  poet.  If  a  poet  be  made  by  strict  rule  he 
belongs  to  the  white  ones.  When  the  substitutes 
are  used  we  have  a  chance  to  get  him.  It  is  not 
often  a  poet  is  made  by  strict  measure,  and  it  is  a 
long  time  before  flame  can  be  distinguished  from 
pure  light;  not  till  it  begins  to  scorch  his  own  soul 
by  its  heat.  Pure  light  has  no  power  to  burn 
the  soul — that  part  of  man  that  is  called  soul." 

"Ah,  I  see  now;  and  can  you  have  a  hand  in 
the  making  of  a  poet,  dear  Witch?" 

"Only  indirectly.  But  I  think  we  may  safely 
count  on  the  poet  that  will  be  born  to-night. 
Thou  canst  sing  to  that  end." 

"I  will  sing;  but,  dear  Witch,  what  are  these 
gray  things  that  fly  around  and  flap  in  our 
faces?  They  are  as  stupid  as  June-bugs." 


164  IN    NETHER   SPACES 

"Those  be  mistakes,  my  velvet  love;  they  be 
born  of  ignorance  and  inertia.  Poor  things, 
they  cannot  even  die,  not  being  living  things. 
That  big  one  there,  tumbling  round  near  the 
ground,  that  is  a  new  one;  he  has  just  been  made 
by  a  statesman.  Oh !  he  is  a  big  mistake,  a  great 
stupid  mistake!"  and  the  old  Witch  cackles 
with  low  glee.  "I  could  tell  you  more,"  she 
said,  "if  I  had  time." 

"Time?  Why,  is  there  such  a  thing  as  time 
at  the  mouth  of  hell?" 

"Oh,  as  to  that,  it  is  all  as  you  look  at  it.  I 
am  a  pretty  spry  old  body.  I  am  pretty  busy. 
Can't  you  see  what  I  am  doing?  I  am  weaving 
ropes  of  hell-fire." 

"What  are  they  for?" 

"Oh,  nothing  in  particular;  they  are  handy 
to  have  around.  I  like  best  to  do  things  for  no 
special  purpose,  that  is  what  keeps  most  folks 
busy,  witches  as  well  as  world-folk.  All  busy, 
busy,  busy,  doing  nothing.  I  hate  a  butterfly; 
methinks  they  are  much  too  light  of  wing." 

"I  like  butterflies,"  said  the  Cat,  licking  its 
jaws. 


THE    END 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS 
GARDEN   CITY,    N.  Y. 


DATE  DUE 


CAYLOBD 


A     000  764  90S 6 


